Narek Antabian

Narek Antabian received his artistic education at the end of the Soviet era, a time of cataclysms and tragic disruptions in Armenia, including a devastating earthquake (1988) and the onset of independence (1991), followed by war, a blockade of Armenia, and a humanitarian, socioeconomic, and energy crisis (1991–94). As a teenager, he was expelled from school for staging a protest. Samvel Petrosyan, at the time a popular artist and instructor at the Terlemezian College of Fine Arts in Yerevan (now the Terlemezian State College of Fine Arts) and a close friend of Antabian’s family, recognized the young man’s talents and invited him to continue his education at the college. This sealed Antabian’s fate.

After graduating, he entered the Yerevan State Institute of Fine Arts and Theater (now the Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts) in Yerevan, from which he graduated in 1986. During these years, Antabian’s father, the prominent philologist Paylak Antabian, was working at the Matenadaran (the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts)—an important center for the study of ancient Armenian culture. The future painter’s frequent visits to the Matenadaran had a significant impact on his understanding of art.

It was the beginning of perestroika, and a spirit of rebellion was in the air. Many students of Antabian’s generation from the Yerevan Fine Arts Institute were searching for artistic innovation, for a new type of art to replace the tired clichés of socialist realism. Likewise for Antabian, in whose work an abstract vein was discernible even during his years of study. He became associated with the avant-garde movement known as Third Floor, participating in their exhibitions. 

In 1985–86, Antabian painted abstract canvases whose rich and contrasting combinations of colors and forms endowed them with expressiveness and spatial depth. The Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection features various paintings by the artist from this period: Cross-Stone (1980, ZAM, D11700), Untitled (1982, ZAM, D00426), Untitled (1985, ZAM, D11996), Cacophony (1985, ZAM, D12022), Composition (1986, ZAM, D12020). These works, which speak to a fully formed artistic vision, are reminiscent of French and American gestural abstract painting of the 1940s and 1950s known as art informel.

Like many of his fellow artists in Yerevan, Antabian sometimes turned to Armenian themes, as seen in two of his paintings in the Dodge Collection. Untitled (1984, ZAM, D11566) depicts rural vignettes executed in a fairy-tale-like, even cartoonish manner. In its decorative, stylized, deliberately “primitivizing” approach, which reduces motifs to simple forms, Untitled contains echoes of Armenian miniatures, carpet ornaments—and, if we delve even further, the work of Martiros Sarian (1880–1972), among the founders of modern Armenian painting. The Mountains of Sevan (1980, ZAM, D11674) depicts a landscape with mountains that encircle Lake Sevan—the “Pearl of Armenia,” so known for its rare beauty. The composition is conceived as a monolithic unity, as if it were a fragment of some cosmic rock.

In addition to working in oils, the painter turned to collage, using nontraditional artistic materials—pieces of rags, cheesecloth, ropes, wood, and newspapers. Antabian’s works in this vein are also featured in the Dodge holdings: Composition (1985, ZAM, D12023), Untitled (1985-95, ZAM, D20463), Agony (1985, ZAM, D12021), Untitled (1986, ZAM, D11804), and Cross (1986, ZAM D00090). Prior to entering the Dodge Collection, some of these early works had been acquired by the noted Armenian art collector Garik Basmadjyan.

In the late 1980s, Antabian spent several months at the Artists' House of Creativity in Senezh. During these months—when Antabian had the opportunity to become acquainted with American and German abstract expressionists and their works—he became firmly entrenched in the realm of abstract art. In 1990, he was invited to mount two solo exhibitions in Germany, in Siegburg and Munich. The local press described his paintings as an intriguing chaos of forms and pigments, interpreting them as depictions of the upheavals taking place in his country: earthquake, war, and the developments that ultimately led to the Soviet collapse in 1991.

In this rapidly changing world, the artist felt that he, too, had to change. In 1991, Antabian immigrated to the United States and settled in New York City, where he remained until 2004. There, he began working in mixed media, producing assemblages featuring the use of natural materials—fragments of various minerals, silver, and wood—evocations of a primordial world. These compositions are framed by a circle—a simple and ideal form, a symbol of cosmic origins. Indeed, these compositions are homages to nature’s transcendental cosmic origins and re-creations of its infinity.

In the late 1990s, he collaborated with the well-known Western Armenian ethno-folk avant-garde musician Arto Tunçboyaciyan. This collaboration brought Tunçboyaciyan to Armenia and led to the formation of an all-star orchestra, the Armenian Navy Band, whose hit album Pztik zinvor [Little soldier], recorded in 1999, was produced by Antabian.

In 2004, another twist in his creative biography brought him back to his homeland. Today, he lives in Yerevan, pursuing a wide range of creative interests: music, literature, film. In 2009, Antabian collaborated with film director Armen Ronov (Mkrtchyan) on Anna Karenina (2009). It won the “New Word in Cinema” prize at the annual Message to Man Film Festival in Saint Petersburg. Ronov has also made a documentary about Antabian.

Antabian’s oil paintings are held in the Zimmerli Art Museum (NJ, USA) and in private collections. His murals may be seen in St. Vartanantz Armenian Apostolic Church in Ridgefield, NJ (The Holy Spirit, 1993), St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral in New York City (The Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ, 1994), and Yerevan State University (Mesrop Mashtots, Inventor of the Armenian Alphabet, 1986, for which the artist won a gold medal).

Arus Stepanyan

Translated from Russian by Ilya Bernstein