Haroutiun Galentz: Color as Form exhibition opens at the Cafesjian Center for the Arts

The exhibition Haroutiun Galentz: Color as Form organized as part of the Museum Networking program of the Cafesjian Center for the Arts features a selection of works from the Galentz Museum.

Since the painter worked in three basic genres – still life, landscape and portraiture – this exhibition thus provides an opportunity for the public to better understand the expression of the artist’s color vision from different angles. For Galentz, color was not something used to indicate the external character of this or that phenomenon. As Matisse liked to say, “When I put a green, it is not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky.” The same held true for Galentz. With color blotches and layers, he would build form, volume, chiaroscuro, and construct perspective. He would do all this freely and without restraint; only guided by aesthetic principles.

This exhibition points out Galentz’s creative rumination, formulated specific language and final passing from reality to almost abstract forms. Graphic series included in the exhibition open a passageway to the “creative sanctum”, where the master would perfect his mark, experimenting with new forms and approaches, and later conveying them to canvas. This is an almost unknown corner for the viewer in the multilayered creative legacy of Galentz.

The exhibition Haroutiun Galentz: Color as Form is yet another step on the path to introduce the artist to a much wider audience, and not only Armenian. Such an initiative reflects the mission of the Cafesjian Art Center. The world created by Galentz, however unreal, is equally real to the extent that it exists on the canvas surface and directly relates to the principal laws dictated by nature – balance and harmony. As Galentz used to say: “In the end, all “isms” will disappear. They will be subsumed in one totality, they will become nature.”