Mountain landscape 1972

Curator: Oh, I find this drawing so evocative. What are your first thoughts? Editor: Kind of restless, wouldn’t you say? It feels… like a charcoal whirlwind trapped on paper, or maybe a topographical map designed by an excitable cartographer. Curator: That's a lovely image. Well, what we’re looking at here is "Mountain Landscape," an ink drawing created in 1972 by Martiros Sarian. It epitomizes Sarian's late modernist explorations of abstraction within landscape art. Editor: Abstraction, definitely. But it also retains a very distinct sense of place. There's an untamed quality; like Sarian’s translating not just a mountain’s form, but the energy it exudes. Look at those jagged peaks – menacingly exciting. Curator: Exactly, he transforms the landscape into almost a character, a study of form that is really striking here. We can examine Sarian’s place in art history to reveal his unique position within the Soviet-Armenian cultural landscape, during a time where many artists navigated constraints by utilizing abstraction. Editor: That’s so interesting, especially when you consider what mountains symbolize. I see them as freedom – barriers overcome and views uncompromised. Knowing this drawing came during the Soviet era makes that symbolic reading all the more compelling. But what is the message beyond, what did he want to achieve by such abstraction? Curator: I feel it allowed Sarian a unique expression; landscape painting was politically neutral and easily celebrated, allowing him access to spaces in society otherwise inaccessible at the time. Editor: In the end it leaves me considering my relationship with art and with freedom itself. Like you mentioned, a clever commentary about place and self-expression. Curator: Thank you, a pleasure sharing space to discuss such beautiful and culturally loaded artwork.