By Nazanine Nouri
Sirak Melkonian, a prominent Iranian-Armenian artist and one of the founders of the modern art movement in Iran passed away in Toronto last Saturday at the age of 93. Melkonian was a pioneer of the Iranian modernist movement, and renowned for his abstract paintings.
Melkonian was born in Tehran in 1931. After graduating from high school, he studied modern European art with the pioneering Iranian-Armenian modernist, Marcos Grigorian.
After Melkonian won the Contemporary Iranian Artists Award at the Iran-America Society in 1957 and the Imperial Court Prize at the Tehran Biennial in 1958, Grigorian encouraged him to move to Italy to study at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma. Melkonian did transfer to Rome, but quit his studies there, preferring instead to learn art outside of the academy, through experience.
سیراک ملکنیان پیشگام هنر نوگرای ایران در ۹۲ سالگی درگذشت
سیراک ملکنیان هنرمند ارمنی ایران و از پیشگامان هنر نوگرا در ۳۰ امرداد ۱۴۰۳ در سن ۹۲ سالگی در کانادا درگذشت.
ملکنیان، متولد ۲۴ مهر ۱۳۱۰ در تهران، با آثار خود که ترکیبی از انتزاع و تاکید بر خط و فرم بود، نقش مهمی در شکل… pic.twitter.com/LiM5EHRq8z— KayhanLondon کیهان لندن (@KayhanLondon) August 20, 2024
His more figurative early works drew attention to his art and were presented at the prestigious Venice Art Biennale (1958) and the Paris Biennale (1959).
Starting in the early 1960s, he switched his focus to abstraction, becoming a key figure on the Iranian art scene. He was part of the 1961 exhibition hosted at the Bank Saderat in Tehran alongside Marcos Grigorian, Bijan Saffari, Sohrab Sepehri, Manucher Sheybani and Parviz Tanavoli, which drew the support and attention of the Iranian arts patron Abby Grey.
Together with other important artists of his time, Melkonian founded the Azad Art Group in the early 1970s. They were formally introduced at the Tehran International Art Fair in 1974.
Melkonian emigrated to Toronto, Canada in 1992 where he continued his artistic activities.
He would go on to participate in more than 140 solo and group exhibitions in Iran and abroad, including a solo show in 2015 entitled “Sirak Melkonian’s Seven Decades of Painting” at Tehran’s Ab Anbar and Aria Art galleries; Art Dubai in 2016; and Teer Art in 2018 and 2020.
One of his early works, “Veiled Woman” (1957) was featured in the Victoria & Albert museum’s “Epic Iran” show in 2021.
Melkonian’s paintings can be found in such major public and private international collections as the Niavaran Palace in Tehran, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.
