GERARDO ORAKIAN

THE PAINTERS OF SORROW. Cont'd.

GERARDO ORAKIAN

GERARDO ORAKIAN (1901-1963) came to Italy from Turkey. His very original, somber colored paintings, with purposeful contrasts of light, portray the deprived lives of the working people, which he presents side by side, as if embracing one another. In Orakian's expressive paintings lies the sad sentiments of the past' and modern times, of someone who has been deprived of his birthland and suffers the fate of the migrant. The artist's desire to return to Armenia never materialized, although a great part of his works found its way into Armenia . Gerardo Orakian was born in 1901 in Constantinople (the capital of the former Ottoman Empire, and the city with the largest concentration of Armenians in the world). With a well-to-do Armenian father and a French mother, Gerardo Orakian completed his secondary education at the famous Getronakan Armenian school. At first he went to France, but by 1920 he had settled in Rome. There he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and remained in the Italian capital, where he lived and worked in extreme poverty and isolation until his death in 1963. His one-man exhibitions in 1947 and 1958 evoked a wide response in the artistic world. His works were saved in part by Armenian artists from other countries. Today he is considered one of the most original Armenian artists of the twentieth century.

GENOCIDE, 1960 ORPHANS, 1960

Nobody would buy those 2 delightful paintings from their author Girardo Orakian while he was alive and living in complete poverty in Italy. He could not even get $50 for his work. Now, both are worth millions of Dollars!!