29 Facts About Vartan Makhokhian

Vartan Makhokhian was an Armenian painter who lived in the Ottoman Empire and France and was known for his marine paintings.

Vartan Makhokhian's art is displayed in various museums throughout the world.

Vartan Makhokhian was born in Trabzon in the Ottoman Empire on 31 May 1869 to Armenian parents.

Vartan Makhokhian's father, Aristakes Makhokhian, was a merchant who demanded that his two daughters and four sons be educated.

In 1875, Makhokhian began his early education at a local Armenian school where he took an interest in drawing.

Vartan Makhokhian later attended the prestigious Sanasarian College in Erzurum, returning to Trabzon after five years of study.

Vartan Makhokhian learned to play the violin and studied music theory.

Vartan Makhokhian's uncle persuaded him to pursue a career in art.

In 1891, Vartan Makhokhian began studies at the Berlin Academy of Arts where he was trained under the directorship of Eugen Bracht and Hans Gude.

Vartan Makhokhian graduated from the academy in 1894 and traveled to the Crimea, where he met with renowned Russian Armenian painter Ivan Aivazovsky in Feodosia.

Vartan Makhokhian returned to his native Trabzon in 1895 and witnessed the Hamidian massacres.

Vartan Makhokhian escaped first to Batum and then to Europe where he began exhibiting his art.

In 1904 Vartan Makhokhian was accepted into the Berlin Artists' Association.

Vartan Makhokhian traveled to Egypt where he exhibited over 150 pieces of his artwork in Alexandria and Cairo.

Vartan Makhokhian returned to Germany in 1907 and participated in various exhibitions Berlin, Dusseldorf, and Munich.

Vartan Makhokhian returned to the Ottoman Empire in 1908 and settled in his hometown of Trabzon.

Vartan Makhokhian continued to paint there, but with the start of World War I and the Armenian genocide, Makhokhian moved to Nice, France in 1914, where he remained the rest of his life.

Vartan Makhokhian received French citizenship in 1927, two years after being awarded the Legion of Honor.

Vartan Makhokhian participated in the Paris Salon in 1921,1922, and 1927.

Vartan Makhokhian exhibited his works in Monte Carlo in 1932.

In 1915, in memory of those who died during the Armenian genocide, Vartan Makhokhian composed a symphony entitled The Sobbing of Armenia.

Vartan Makhokhian held exhibitions in Cairo, Alexandria, Munich, Dusseldorf, Berlin, Berlin, London, Nice, Marseilles, Paris, and Monaco.

Vartan Makhokhian received the Legion of Honour with the degree of Chevalier in 1925.

French art critic Camille Mauclair published a book in 1918 about Makhokhian entitled Le Peintre de la mer Wartan Makhokhian.

Vartan Makhokhian's art, inspired, is circumscribed, determined only by Nature and the play of his emotion.

Vartan Makhokhian has succeeded in expressing Nature and his emotion with knowledge and power, because he has always been animated with increasing sincerity, worked with methodical perseverance, contemplated with a passionate care.

Vartan Makhokhian has produced a series of works which reveal him at once as one of the most true technicists of modern art.

Vartan Makhokhian meditates, creates and rises instinctively to the level of the masters, one of whom he will certainly become, as he possesses the necessary quality,-intuition and talent.

Vartan Makhokhian's art is displayed in museums throughout the world, including the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Nice, Musee Armenien de France, National Gallery of Armenia, and the Pontifical Residence of the Etchmiadzin Cathedral.