Curated by
Haykuhi Sahakyan, Narek Van Ashughatoyan

Exhibition Dates:
September 10 – November 30, 2026

Painter and graphic artist Hovhannes (Vanik) Sharambeyan (1926-1986), Honored Art Worker of the Armenian SSR, holds a distinctive place in the history of Armenian culture for his wholehearted dedication to the nation’s spiritual and material heritage. His legacy extends beyond artistic achievement, encompassing the preservation of national heritage and important aspects of museum and artistic life.

Sharambeyan’s art and cultural activity may be viewed as an integrated system of the “iconography of memory.” In his works, people, objects, urban and rural environments, historical and architectural monuments, and the landscapes of his homeland appear as bearers of the traces of time, transmitting the legacy of the past into the present. The same worldview underlies his sustained interest in folk art. The image, the object, the cultural environment, and the museum form an interconnected whole within his practice.

For Sharambeyan, heritage was not a completed past, but a living source shaping contemporary cultural self-awareness. His multifaceted activity was aimed at cultivating public aesthetic taste, fostering appreciation of national heritage, preserving and renewing artistic traditions, and strengthening awareness of national identity. His ideas continue today in the museums of folk arts in Yerevan and Dilijan that bear his name.

The exhibition dedicated to Sharambeyan’s 100th anniversary seeks to reveal the breadth of his artistic practice and the diversity of his cultural activity by bringing together works from the National Gallery of Armenia, the Folk Arts Museum in Yerevan, the Dilijan Local Lore Museum and Art Gallery, the Service for the Protection of Historical Environment and Cultural Museum-Reservations, the Artists’ Union of Armenia, as well as from the artist’s family and private collections.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Green Rock Foundation.