Gyumri famous painter Samvel Galstyan, who resides and paints in one of the muddy streets of Gyumri, in a narrow cottage, says that the majority of the diplomats accredited to the Republic of Armenia are the lovers of his works. They often buy Samvel Galstyan’s watercolor paintings of various scenes of Gyumri, however, they simultaneously say the paintings are too sad.
“But soon enough they were convinced that I do not paint untrue things, whoever bought my painting from abroad, told me my paintings are very sad. Whoever talked to me, said – he does a good work, the painting is of a value, but they are sad. I say, yes, everything is colorful in your country, everything is clean, it is natural that your painters will paint with red and yellow, I ask them – how can I paint the mud with red? How right would it be? Does a happy mud exist?” explained the painter.
Asked whether the one who enters his studio does not get into a mud before reaching it, do they not see that the streets cannot be passed, the painter answered: “Yes, they were witnessing it, there are very interesting stories. The building in front of our cottage was a very bad building, I do not know if you have read Gorky’s play “In the Bottom”, the people from that “bottom” were residing there, I do not know which conference of the Armenian Revolutionary Party it was, a lot of people had come from various countries. One of them, very accidentally, who as I remember was an architect in Canada, had bought one of my paintings and here is how my name was spread among them. The people had seen my painting in his house or office I do not know, but they had taken my address and came here in Jeeps. They came at the exact time when one of the residents at the building in front of our cottage, was demolishing her apartment. The demolisher was a woman – with worker’s outfit and tools, hitting on the wall. And ours is a cottage, it was shaking because of the hitting. One of the guests asked what did that man do. I answered it was a woman, demolishing. He asked me what she was demolishing, I told him – her apartment. The man got surprised and responded, but the building will collapse on her. I said she was demolishing to take off the fittings. It was absurd to them, they forgot about my paintings, turned to her and started to tape that scene. Afterwards, when they came back to my paintings, people were standing here in a queue for oil. Do you remember when the oil was being distributed? Lots of dogs, stray dogs, women digging in the trash, I have painted all of that, inasmuch as it was my surroundings, I was seeing it. At that time they bought more paintings, they witnessed, they went deeper into all that,” says the painter.
Samvel Galstyan remembers that one of the Italian Ambassadors bought “kilograms of paintings” from him, he even asked to teach his wife to paint with watercolor, teach how he paints the muds and the stones of Gyumri.
Nune AREVSHATYAN
