Ervand Demirdjian

장소: Constantinople

타고난: 1870

죽음: 1938

전기:

Ervand Demerdjian was born in May 1870, in Constantinople where he studied fine arts and graduated with honors in 1890. In 1893 he went to Paris and enrolled in the Academie Julian becoming a student to painter Jean Paul Laurens and to the famous orientalist Benjamin Constant. At the same time he worked at the Louvre studying classical works such as Delacroix, Dante and Virgil. By mid-1894, he returned to Constantinople, however, the persecution of Armenians during 1895 and 1896 forced Demirdjian to leave. In 1896, he fled with a group of Armenians to Alexandria, from there he moved to Cairo. Together with 2,000 other Armenian refugees Demirdjian’s life was initially very difficult and devoid of income. The local Armenian community led by Decran Pasha did its best to shelter and feed them. Demirdjian’s experiences and observations of Egyptian popular life became the subject matter of much of his work, leading to an enormous quantity of drawings and paintings documenting everyday life. He participated in some of the annual exhibitions of the Circle of Artists which was the first artistic group in modern Egypt. In 1901 he began lecturing art and teaching in the Khorenian Armenian School where he tutored students privately. His most talented student was the well known painter Diran Garabedian (1882-1963) who became his successor and one of the first avant-garde painters in Egypt. Ervand Demirdjian lived and worked in a flat on top of a khan (on Mohammed Ali street), not far from Islamic Cairo where he received much of his inspiration for his work. He also taught at the Kalousdian Armenian National school in Boulac and occasionally he was co...