Inga & Anush - Armenian Reporter

Hakob Hakobyan: repatriate, patriot, painter
Discovering new forms
of expression in an
unfamiliar time
by Maria
Titizian
YEREVAN – When I asked a friend of
mine, well versed in all things artistic and
articulate, if there was anything I should
know before interviewing the renowned
artist Hakob Hakboyan, he said: “Hakob’s
main characteristic is that he is the
conveyor of the eternal pain of Armenia.
The Genocide is permanently imprinted
on his essence as a man.”
Riding up the elevator to the 10th
floor of his apartment building in Yerevan,
I tried to form images in my head of
this Western Armenian painter who had
come of his own volition to Soviet Armenia
in the 1960s. Would he be candid
Was he bitter Did his art suffer because
of his desire to move to an elusive notion
of homeland Did his nationality,
his history dictate his path in life as an
artist Did it make him a better artist
He opened the door to his spacious
apartment/studio and welcomed me in,
quickly escorting me through a maze of
rooms and corridors to his sitting room.
Once we settled in and had spoken for a
few minutes, I realized that after 47
years he had not lost his Western
Armenian; in fact he had retained
most of it and only a few Eastern Armenian
expressions and pronunciations
made their way into his speech.
Not only was he candid and unassuming,
but he allowed me to travel
with him back to his childhood, unlocking
some of the pain and confusion
of his early existence, which
undoubtedly led him to become one
of the greatest Armenian painters
of our time.
This is the story of Hakob Hakobyan.
Fate, loss, destiny
Hakob Hakobyan was born in Alexandria,
Egypt, in 1923,
the second of three
children. His parents
were from Aintab. I
assumed that here his
story would take the
traditional narrative:
parents forced on to
deportations, barely escaping, make their
way to Egypt. But fate had saved them
from the tragedy that befell so many. “We
were lucky. Only some members of our
family were forced on deportation routes
and then killed. The rest had left before
the Genocide,” he said.
At the time of the 1896 massacres,
Hakobyan’s father, 15 years old at the
Hakob Hakobyan in his studio in Yerevan. Photos: Grigor Hakobyan for the Armenian Reporter.
time, was sent to the United States by
his family to live with his married sister.
“We don’t know much about our father
because we lost him at a very young age,”
Hakobyan said. All they know is that
he stayed in the United States for 18
years before moving to Egypt sometime
in 1913. “In the meantime, my mother’s
father had moved to Alexandria also before
the Genocide. My grandfather then
returned to Aintab to bring the rest of
his family, but they were killed before he
got there. My mother and father then
were spared of the Genocide.”
After losing his father at the
age of seven, Hakobyan was
sent Melkonian Educational
Institution in Cyprus to continue
his education. “I guess they
sent me away to school so that
I wouldn’t be left on the streets,
and to receive an education. I
wasn’t able to continue my education
because of the war. That’s
how my life progressed – with
different waves. I really never
had a plan,” he explained.
The joy of revelation
One day Hakobyan’s father took
him in his lap and drew a rabbit
on a piece of paper.
“For me it was
like witnessing
a
miracle. I
had never
seen
a n y o n e
draw before. My father asked me if I
could draw one. I tried and I was able to
draw the rabbit. After that I always drew,”
he said plaintively. He admits to loving
the attention he would get every time
he drew. “As a child when I would draw
people would compliment my drawings.
I guess in a way it was very psychological.
When people compliment you, you then
want to receive those compliments, so
you draw.”
His first art teachers who had a great
influence on the young student while at
Melkonian were Arakel Badrig and Onnik
Avedisian. However his tenure at
Melkonian was short-lived and he was
forced to return to Egypt in 1941 because
of the Second World War.
“Life was difficult. I was forced
to work. It’s
very dangerous
to
stop something
halfway
through,” he
said, referring to
his education, which he
never was able to return to. “I always
lived in uncertainty. Everything was
in disarray, unorganized. Even my
painting was unorganized,” he admited.
But his love of
reading Armenian
literature and history
sustained him
through those difficult
years.
In 1952 he traveled to Paris. It was during
his time there until 1954 that he decided
not to abandon painting. “It was
a very high ideal – to paint and support
my family through my painting.”
The journey “home”
The yearning to move to Armenia started
at a very young age for Hakobyan. “It
was my destiny to move here,” he said.
He hadn’t been able to come during the
great repatriation of 1946–48 when over
100,000 Armenians from all over the
world repatriated to Soviet Armenia. Even
after hearing all the stories of how the repatriates
had suffered, his desire to come
to Armenia remained the guiding light of
his life.
He was finally able to repatriate in
1962 with his wife Mari and their two
young daughters, aged five and 11.
He said that even after living here for
more than 40 years,
people still ask him
why he came. “I always
wanted to come to
Armenia,” he put it simply.
The fundamental desire for him
was to live in the homeland and not
in odarutyun. “There is and was only one
Armenia. There wasn’t a capitalist Armenia
or a Bolshevik Armenia. There was
only one Armenia.
At
that time
it happened to be under a communist
system. Armenia is a much older thing
than that regime it was under for 70 years
– that regime disintegrated and disappeared
but Armenia remained,” he said.
Though he is softspoken, with kindly
eyes, his tone shifted when he started
talking about the Soviet regime
and its lasting impact on
the people of Armenia.
“Whoever hasn’t lived
under the Soviet regime
can never understand
what kind of a monstrous regime it was.
A regime like that has never existed
in the history of mankind. It was a regime
that wiped out millions of people.
Very few heroic people tried to struggle
against it. They paid the price with their
lives or were exiled. Look at how they
killed Charents,” he said, as he became
more animated.
He admited that he wasn’t treated as
badly as some, yet he could never escape
the “nightmare” because of what he saw
the Soviets do to other people. When he
spoke about 1946, he didn’t mince his
words. “The great repatriation was a disaster.
Repatriation was the final, terrible
blow to the Western Armenians. What
the Turks had left unfinished, the Soviet
Continued on page C5 m
C4 Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture February 21, 2009