Мансурян Мгер

Mansurian Mher

Мансурьян Мгер

http://www.roslin.com/artinfo/artframes/mher_mansurian.htm

Mher Mansurian

 Mher Mansurian was born in 1943 in Beirut, Lebanon.  In 1947, he immigrated with his parents to Armenia, where he received his elementary and specialized education.  In 1975, he graduated, with honors, from the Fine Arts Institute of Yerevan.

   From 1975-1979, Mansurian entered an intensive period of creative activity, participating in several group expositions in the USSR and its former republics.  In 1978, he followed with several brilliant solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Armenia, and thereafter, in the Baltic countries, Riga, Talin and Vilnius.

  In 1979, Mansurian moved to France where he now lives and creates, bringing his active participation to local cultural life.  In 1980, he had several solo and group exhibitions in France, and in various galleries of Armenia.

  His works have found permanent homes in the Armenian Hall of Paintings, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Armenia, the Ministry of Education Fund in Moscow, and in various special collections in Armenia, Moscow, France, Belgium, Germany, Holland, the United States, and Australia.

  Somebody once asked Mher Mansurian, "Why do you practically never paint people?"  "But my paintings are only about people," he answered with a half smile.  Mher Mansurian is above all a symbolist painter.

  We can but see ourselves in the discarded, battered and all tied up objects he keeps painting in halftone which reminds us so much of this famous mysterious smile...

  One day, while walking by a fruit market, Mher noticed a discarded but undamaged green leaf on a heap of rubbish.  He picked it up, took it home and put it in a vase full of fresh water.  After a while, he was pleasantly surprised to find the leaf was actually developing some roots.  Full of gratitude and joy, Mher painted the vase with the leaf as a symbol to life, beauty and truth...

  It is not difficult to enter the visions of Mher Mansurian, the key to the door is after all in the first painting.