Armenian woman with bağlam 1915

Martiros Sarian conjured this scene of an Armenian woman with a bağlam with paint and probably a whole lot of intuition. The colors here are really singing – that bold blue backdrop, the warm pinks and yellows… you can almost feel the heat of the place. I’m imagining Sarian in his studio, maybe surrounded by objects like these, figuring out how to capture the light, the textures, the sheer presence of this woman and her instrument. Look at the way he's simplified the forms, almost like he's distilling the essence of the scene. The woman's face is so understated but carries so much feeling. That yellow instrument case to the right almost feels like a little sun, doesn’t it? Sarian’s work reminds me of Matisse, a painter who also knew how to make colors vibrate against each other. I like to think of artists like Sarian and Matisse in conversation across time, each pushing painting in their own way, showing us new ways of seeing and feeling the world.