Ruben Anghaladyan
…He is full of freshness and temperament, both in early adolescence and in his youth, when he headlong burst into art (not entered it, not leapt into it, but truly burst in), just as he did into life. Many thought him mischievous, mad, yet he—thoughtful and ardent—greedily discovers life and himself in this world, scarcely looking to the sides.
The creator’s solitude® from the moment of birth to this day. He affirms himself by rejecting first the Tiflis world as style, then the Armenian one as worldview, then the Soviet as perception of the world, and finally the cosmopolitan as something that negates individuality. In the inner world of such artists, steadfastness and negation coexist simultaneously…
Henry Elibekyan is among those artists who are difficult to live with and difficult to assimilate, despite the obviousness of his talent. He is at once unrestrained and constrained (free of complexes and deeply complex-ridden), and in every moment of his multifaceted creativity he is both measured and imbued with unbridled emotion. If in 20th-century art he has even a counterpart, it is Georges Hrashali—Georgy Yakulov. The diversity of Henry Elibekyan’s creative nature was already evident at the very beginning of his path…
Theatre—as a lifelong companion. But painting—first and foremost. An innate artistic gift (not merely in terms of behavior, but of his very human essence) lived, lives, and must live in his soul until life’s final pulsation. Is this obstinacy, provocation, or a tendency to place us all as background? Directing the stage of life, treating people as actors, mannequins, buffoons, and dummies, presenting situations and statements, bringing to the surface the implements of petty everyday life, plain domestic objects, and turning all of this into symbols, transforming them into magical signs, fully plunging into that distance—presenting a staging—such is Henry Elibekyan.
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Being extraordinary and possessing a stormy temperament, steadfastness that can instantly turn into an aggressive, even hostile stance, from birth repelled—and continues to repel—people. This especially concerned mediocrities circulating around the art sphere. But what is wrong with a creator’s steadfastness, his principled nature and ardor, his selfless faith in the power of art? What is wrong when a creator, as if in a single volley, embraces an idea, a interlocutor, and gives his own distinct answer to any question?
Here lies his tragedy and his solitude, which he bears—and bears with dignity, as befits a strong and unyielding person. I write all this in my essay to reveal Henry Elibekyan’s complete, self-sufficient artistic essence. Such was the majority of the Sixties generation. The temptations to break, to sell out, to betray outright were not few, yet they remained faithful both to themselves and to their difficult path, and to the sincere road of search—one they touched not only intuitively, but also while risking dead ends, the great danger of becoming secondary, provincial…
I have not seen how the artist creates his canvases, but I can assume that he must paint portraits quickly, in a single session, for they contain the spark of life, an eternally pulsating energy of meaning, a psychological quest… That flare gives rise to an associative chain of the artist’s metaphysical turbulences. The artist’s attitude toward the heroes he paints is extremely personal and concrete. For Henry, the human image is his very way of life—his highest service to art. He accepts no other approach. His portraits and abstract paintings are imbued with immense energy. In both cases there is a deep psychological rift, an inner contradiction tearing his world apart from within. …In Henry’s temperament—in the tension of his search for an interlocutor, in his caution, his pessimism toward people’s opinions, and his extraordinary reactions—he is and will remain a romantic, one who trusts and is disappointed at the same time. And so it will always be…