Death of Hovhannes Zardarian (July 21, 1992)

Hovhannes Zardarian was an Armenian prolific painter of the twentieth century. 

He was born on January 8, 1918, into a family of craftsmen in Kars. During the mass exodus following the Ottoman invasion in early 1918, the family moved first to the North Caucasus (Armavir and Krasnodar) and then settled in Tiflis. 

In 1933, after attending painting classes at the Art School of Tiflis, Zardarian moved to Yerevan. He entered the Applied Arts School and graduated in 1937, continuing his studies at the Institute of Fine Arts and Architecture of the Russian Academy of Arts in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). Zardarian was recognized as a promising young painter when he returned to Armenia in early 1941. He was exempted from military service during World War II and joined the Painters’ Union of Armenia. He returned to Russia in 1944 with a series of still lives and Armenian landscapes that were selected for the Armenian Decade of Art and Literature in Moscow.  

Back in Armenia, Zardarian collaborated with different artists on large scale paintings commissioned by the state. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1956). In 1956 and 1958, he participated in international exhibitions in Prague and India, as well as the Venice Biennale. His painting “Spring” (1956) won a silver medal at the Expo 58 in Brussels. It was featured on a 1974 Soviet stamp and on a 2018 stamp and a 2018 commemorative silver coin in Armenia. The same painting was exhibited at the Tretyakov Gallery of Moscow for many years. 

In 1959-1961, Hovhannes Zardarian participated in exhibitions in New York, Mexico City, Havana, Cairo, Warsaw, and Berlin. He received the title of People’s Artist of Armenia in 1961. He participated for the second time in the Venice Biennale in 1964. In 1969, he became a professor at the Yerevan Fine Arts and Theater Institute. His paintings were later exhibited in Paris (1971), Tokyo (1972), Venice (1986-1987), and Montreal (1990). He was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples in 1978 and was elected as a full member of the Academy of Arts of the Soviet Union in 1988. 

The prolific artist passed away on July 21, 1992, in Yerevan.