Artists / Madoyan Manvel Lyutvikovich

Madoyan Manvel Lyutvikovich
St.Petersburg, Russia

Total artworks: 15

Views: 37398

Manvel Madoyan Born December 14, 1960 in Yerevan, Armenia.
Graduated from the “Academy of Arts”, Repin Institute of Architecture, Sculpture and Art in Saint-Petersburg, Professor Andrey Milnikov’s Workshop of Monumental Art in 1991, after five years of study.
1994 - Member of the Painters Union of the Russian Federation.

Mysteries as a search for new realities

1. Generous stillness lurked in the pictures of the Armenian painter Manvel Madoyan (b. 1960). From where does generous stillness flow? Why, behind the window there is a city indifferent to stillness and an extremely rational, immoral new millennium. It appears that the XXth century completely persecuted generosity from human life. The pictures in his rather spacious studio, the huge window of which looks on a noisy street, speak of the Yerevan painter’s diligence. A fine face, attentive mild look speak of Manvel’s delicacy, his frankness and ability to attract people. Might be by this fact being explained a trustful and full of trepidation image of a naked woman’s figure taken from life. At the same time there is some light restlessness in the artist’s face.

2. Colleagues and contemporaries of a painter in Yerevan and Los Angeles, Paris or Moscow and Milan either strive unconditionally for spiritless art trends where intellectual but imaginary freedom reigns or imitate the passed way. However, there is a small group of creators whose interests are in the sphere of a new art synthesis. And here the problems of painters, actors, architects, composers and writers complicated much; for moral responsibility in culture is actually spiritually. It’s just spirituality and morals that colour philosophical and art ideals within creative work and make the painter a genuine agent of Time which should always have its signs and symbols. I’d like to see Manvel Madoyan a kind of creator whose creative fate is so interesting and teaching by the light of abovementioned since the painter is making good progress, and his creative will intuitively and simultaneously moves towards the new synthesis in painting. What’s the art of synthesis for him, what are forming vectors and self-recognition for him? These are matters which demand serious and scrupulous analysis. How can be explained that steady inner interest of an artist in respect to the world of man at the time when the whole generation of his contemporaries remain without its own face, without a live breath, without an aspiration to be realized within the simple and eternal truth. His way in the art has a definite and important stage. The artist graduated from Academy of Art in the year 1991. The Petersburg culture grew up many outstanding Armenian painters, architects, composers, sculptors. There is only the least part of light names: I. Aivazovsky, M. Ekmalyan, A. Tamanyan, A. Ovsepyan, A. Hovhannesyan, R. Israelyan, A. Baruchev, M. Avetisyan. The museums of Petersburg, especially the great Hermitage, the great culture of communication, human brotherhood and respect for individual, intellectual live search – all of that organized and educated the young Manvel Madoyan. He like many Armenian painters just here found their first love – the great trial for creative vulnerable personality. And from here comes trepidation of woman’s naked images, pulsation, purity and beauty where modesty emphasizes inner impulse of love desire. Men and woman’s portraits which open a psychological state of a contemporary are interesting as well. Reincarnation of his characters or heroes represents a semantic art search of Manvel, his “alter ego” in the most important aesthetic trends of the European past. He is trying to find some resources for metaphysical reflections, in stylistic and aesthetics. He looks into them as very important components of the formation and the world outlook as the beginning of a new art synthesis.

3. In his paintings of previous several years he was trying to discover the new essential creative freedom so important for him. His art position and inner will are trying to move away from the boundaries of the Petersburg’s school theory and approach the experiment cautiously so as not to destroy the main merits of his own proficiency and world outlook – genuinity of feelings, picturesque qualities and skillfulness of a drawing. At the same time Manvel inputs his love and doubts in an aspiration to realize the plastic of a landscape, to find the world of a contemporary in his works, so finding his own place in the art life of Yerevan.
But Art – Yerevan, naturally, doesn’t come out beyond the boundaries of Armenia, on the one hand, into diaspora, on the other hand, into art – business of the rest world. And here many of his colleagues were led by an art market, frankly speaking, stepped aside from genuine creativeness for the sake of some place beyond local competition. Manvel didn’t follow that slippery and short – sighted way.

What do confidence and scale give Manvel in his own affections? I suppose, the country where he was born and got the education being formed as a personality, where he started his own intellectual search, but wasn’t in time as a painter, took not the last place. And that country was USSR. Today, in his creative potential I can see a living breath of future mysteries. He is a very interesting, profoundly spiritual and searching person; so he is in the art. Metaphysical images for the artist who entered the realm of maturity are important and interesting. A transforming reality beyond which he doesn’t even see abstraction is important for him. Colour, rhythm and the culture of a drawing take an organizing place in his works. He isn’t a supporter for carelessness and, besides his own personages or landscapes and some taken details, the choice of color are very important for him. So they should tune the spectator in a calm and thoughtful reflective dialogue. His desires are genuine, his attitude towards man is kind and frank. He is vulnerable as a personality but steady and searching. His paradoxical duality – the naivety and depth of man and nature apprehension give his individuality broad opportunities of art search.

4. Let’s now comprehend his entrance for the Art in the context of Time and the perspective, as well.
He found himself in the realm of the most improbable circumstances, and it happened what nobody expected – the empire disappeared suddenly, the world (including the world of art) transformed with such rapidity, that many of us weren’t able to realize whether there was a fair choice in the new life. A fair appraisal in the art is the most important mechanism of its apprehension. Any great national culture should have its own objective appraisal of the art process.
The world culture was on the verge of the great crisis, and with the collapse of the USSR it happened to be the deepest shock. First of all, that’s the crisis of philosophical, religious and aesthetical outlook. He lighted many merits and shortages of the world outlook problems of protestant civilization and gave life to the dirtiest features of mass art consciousness.


The formula – “The World is a Show” became the most important platform of the American altogether western mass consciousness and, first of all, in the art. However, each nation and each individual ought to find their own ways. And here one would like to know which the contents of the “fair” is in the module of art justice? That is what should be the criterion and module of a choice. So the world not only broadened with the collapse of the great country, but it acquired the concrete and sometimes extremely provincial boundaries of national culture. And they hinder the real creators. In this connection, one recollects the two great writers of the XXth century, J. Joyce and S. Backeth. When their homeland Ireland became independent, they left the country forever, saying that “the climax of nationalism isn’t the ground for the great culture “.
Today, all the Armenian mass culture (Rabis in the most broad genes – from music, cinema, architecture and playwriting to journalism, poetry, politics and clothes etc) lives on the one hand, in the hidden or open slogans of patriotism, on the other hand, trying to organize their own “show” imitating the West. How can Manvel Madoyan remain genuine in these conditions? Well, but his priorities are based upon the ability to have a dialogue with classical culture, carefully creating his own world, where even for surrealistic and abstract exercises were allotted their own vectors.
Large synthesis will connect spirit and form, art universal look and the weighed analysis of human existence, a distinctly traced tendency of a synthesized portrait, landscape and still life. That can be found at Manvel’s. The painter is in a state of considerate self-study, where it’s allotted as much place to a style search as be given to a semantic vector. So the form should appear out of the reality. Mysteries appear even in the portraying of landscape, when all of a sudden a dynamic image enlivens the landscape. Sometimes the painter does it with color, sometimes it’s done by the play of a shade and light or some details.
5. In one of his talks Manvel Madoyan much appreciated the idea of Goethe about fantasy. “As the main forces of our capability notion – sensuality, reason and, mind are represented; as to fantasy, it’s often forgotten, so there’s incorrigible flaw”. According to Goethe, fantasy is the fourth main force of our spiritual being. It appends sensuality in a shape of memory, gives to the mind some contemplated experience, forms and finds images for reasonable ideas, so enlivening human integrity as a whole, without of which it had to be engrossed in a pitiful worthlessness. “Thus, intellect, artistic imaginations, proficiency and experience, their qualities and volumes, as well as inner connections make up, by Manvel Madoyan, some system. All the components naturally supplement each other and depend on reality, reflections and doubts without of which the breath of human life disorientates and might turn into a spiritless mechanical work. It often happens to very talented artists. Manvel chose a way of the deepest but not radical search where the aesthetic values of the past help the artist to love beauty, realize high beauty of human life, raise essential problems of existence, at the same time trying to keep his own outlook.

One should cautiously enter a fragile world of the Armenian painter, Manvel Madoyan, so as not to worry generous stillness by a careless word and inattentive look.

Ruben Angaladyan ( cultorologist ) November, 2005.Yerevan.