TMoCA to hold Marcos Grigorians commemoration ceremony

TMoCA to hold Marcos Grigorian’s commemoration ceremony

TEHRAN-The commemoration ceremony of the late Iranian Armenian artist Marcos Grigorian will be held on Tuesday at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA).

Organized on the occasion of the 100th birth anniversary of the renowned artist, the ceremony is held simultaneous with the exhibition “Marcos Grigorian: A Retrospective” which is underway at the TMoCA, Mehr reported.

The event will have several speakers including painter Mehdi Hosseini who was a friend of Grigorian’s, painter and art critic Hassan Mourizinejad, documentarian Hamidreza Zeinali who has made a documentary about Grigorian, director of the Marcos Grigorian Foundation, and visual artist Michel Allahverdian, and cultural counsellor at the Embassy of Ireland in Iran Hrachya Mkhitaryan.

Marcos Grigorian (1925–2007) was an impactful artist and gallery owner, celebrated as a pioneer of modern Iranian art. 

Born in Kropotkin, Russia, to an Armenian family fleeing massacre, he moved to Iran in 1930, where he later opened the Apadana Gallery in Tehran in 1949. Grigorian studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, graduating in 1954, and subsequently established the influential Galerie Esthétique in Tehran. He was instrumental in organizing the first Tehran Biennial in 1958 and was a dedicated educator at the Fine Arts Academy. In the 1960s, he relocated to the United States, establishing Universal Galleries in Minneapolis. 

In 1975, Grigorian helped organize the Group of Free Painters and Sculptors in Tehran and was a founder member. Other founding artists included Gholamhossein Nami, Massoud Arabshahi, Morteza Momayez, Mir Abdolrez Daryabeigi, and Faramarz Pilaram.

His series “Earthworks” was on canvas and it used a mixture of clay and straw called “kahgel,” which is commonly found as a building material in villages in Iran. He exhibited his clay and straw works in Yerevan in 1991. Grigorian was also an early artist with land art in Iran.

In his later years, he settled in Yerevan, Armenia, where he created the Museum of the Middle East and donated thousands of artworks. His legacy was marred by tragedy when he was fatally assaulted in 2007.

The “Marcos Grigorian: A Retrospective” exhibition, currently underway at the TMoCA, provides a scholarly overview of five key phases of Grigorian's career, highlighting his contributions to the history of art. 

The retrospective features his expressionist paintings, as well as his iconic “earth art” and works created with straw and clay.

This is the debut solo exhibition of Marcos Grigorian's works at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in over four decades of operation. The exhibit is organized by the Marcos Grigorian Foundation in Yerevan, Armenia.

This exhibition seeks to contribute to introducing this artist and his considerable influence on the evolution of Iranian contemporary painting to the current generation of painters and art enthusiasts.

The commemoration ceremony of Marcos Grigorian will start at 3 p.m. on Tuesday. Admission is free for the public.

SS/SAB
 

source: tehrantimes.com