Prolific Armenian Painter Haroutiun Galentz is Making a Comeback

A 20th-century modernist has been the subject of a recent book that reassessed his legacy, as well as a dedicated conference at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice this month.

The work of Armenian painter Haroutiun Galentz (1910–1967) is seeing a resurgence with interest in both Italy and Lebanon. As a survivor of the Armenian Genocide during World War I, Galentz’s oeuvre serves not only as a reminder of the resilience of the human spirit but also the power of creativity amid some of the worst imaginable atrocities.

Last fall, the first English-language monograph dedicated to the artist was released by the publisher Skira, with events in Paris and at the Nuhad Es-Said Pavilion for Culture linked to the National Museum of Beirut marking the occasion. Haroutiun Galentz: The Form of Colour, edited by Vartan Karapetian and Marie Tomb, brought together a collection of pieces by Galentz from the National Gallery of Armenia and the Janibekyan Collection, along with holdings from museums and private collections across Europe, Asia, and North America. A closer look at Galentz’s paintings, archival documents, letters, and memoirs about him altogether highlights his importance as an international cosmopolitan modernist.

This monograph recently figured into a larger one-day conference dedicated to the work and cultural legacy of the Armenian painter organized by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice at Aula Baratto on May 25. The event, curated by Silvia Burini and organized by the Centre for Studies in Russian, Central Asian and Caucasian Art (CSAR), in collaboration with the Armenian Arts Council and Skira, brought together international scholars and researchers who discussed the intersections of exile, memory, and modernity in Galentz’s artworks.

Despite being a major 20th-century modernist, Galentz’s canvases have long-evaded definitive categorization. This is, perhaps, a result of the artist’s fraught personal history as a survivor of the Armenian Genocide during World War I. During those interwar and postwar years, Galentz rebuilt his life and art practice in the Lebanese capital city Beirut, where he became a central figure in the formation of modern painting.

Galentz was known for a vivid use of colors, dynamic compositions, and unique sense of emotional depth in his work that is drawn from his early training in the Beaux-Arts system and can be seen among his early artistic influences, namely, French avant-gardes painter George Michelet, who settled in the Levant States (or present-day Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, and Turkey).

Between 1926 and 1946, Galentz became further entrenched in Beirut’s artistic and intellectual circles at a time that was both politically fragile and saw the transformation of the city into a cosmopolitan hub. In 1939, Galenz had the opportunity to show his work on a global stage as part of the Lebanese Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair; the fair marked a crucial moment in the international visibility of the developing Lebanese modernism movement.

Hoping to reconnect with his native land, Galentz relocated again after World War II to the Soviet Union. The artist’s first solo exhibition in 1962—staged mere weeks before politician Nikita Khrushchev’s condemnation of nonconformist art at the Manège—was well-received by critics and writers such as Ilya Ehrenburg and Alexander Gitovich, who helped propel the artist out of obscurity and into greater prominence in his newly established locale.

Here, Galentz thrived during what was known as the cultural “thaw” of the Soviet Union, a period characterized by its general repose following the death and strict censorship of dictator Joseph Stalin. Even though he maintained his educational background in the Beaux-Arts and Parisian avant-garde traditions, Galentz did not shy away from reconfiguring and abstracting tenants of Social Realism in his canvases as well. Still, Galentz’s paintings maintained a similarly radiant, yet elusive and introspective quality, with more formal risks than, say, overt political dissent.

Before his untimely passing at 57 years old, Galentz’s final painting Spring in Our Garden (1967) “mirrors his existence, as a man who bore the scars of genocide, the chains of Stalinism, and the trials of repatriation, yet painted beauty with every breath, his brush a quiet defiance against oblivion,” The Form of Colour explains. “Galentz left no written record of his thoughts, no diary to elucidate his struggles—only his art, each canvas a shard of his soul, glowing with a clarity and beauty that transcends the circumstances of its creation.”

Whether Galentz was creating a portrait or a landscape painting, his dedication to the medium was unwavering as he continually negotiated between artistic traditions and his own lived circumstances. The result was an oeuvre defined by themes of continued displacement and adaptation through personal resilience. Now, however, rather than being understood within national canons, scholars and cultural institutions alike are reconceiving of Galentz’s paintings across borders to better encapsulate, according to the book, “a painter whose journey through Soviet Armenia illuminates the enduring capacity of art to resist, to heal, and to affirm the human spirit.”