Poetic interpretation of the world is reachable only for a real artist endued with the gift to see, to feel, to remember and who is capable through the power of his art to keep the eternal and elusive beauty and generously give it to people. AshotKhachatryanisoneofthoseartists.

His childhood and adolescence is connected with Armenia. He was born in 1954 in the Ararat valley of the biblical Mount Ararat. Having started drawing since childhood, exactly on the ancient land of the ancestors, he realized his mission. It was there where painting became an inevitable part of his life and soul. After he finished professional school in Yerevan and Leningrad, after getting acquainted with the great heritage of the past, he strongly marked own way in art, forever remaining faithful to his roots.

In 1983 the future artist graduated from the Yerevan School of arts and crafts. After two years of studying at the department ofdrawing at the Armenian State Pedagogical University, in 1977 he moved to Leningrad. In 1978-1981 Ashot Khachatryan was an irregular student at Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after I.E. Repin.

In 1981 it he took his part in the great Republican exhibition "Youth of the country" for the first time. From this moment, Ashot actively started to exhibit his paintings in Russia and abroad. The first personal exhibition held in St. Petersburg in 1991, determined his future career - he decided to devote himself to art.

Next year he becomes a member of the Saint-Petersburg Union of Artists, since 1993 he was always reelected as a member of the painting section bureau. Since 2002 he was a board member of the Saint-Petersburg Union of Artists.

In the following years he won recognition among colleagues and audiences, what is proved by the impressive number of exhibitions, eleven of which are personal. His paintings are exposed at the Museum of St. Etchmiadzin in Armenia, at the Yerevan Museum, at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs office in St. Petersburg and in private collections of many countries.

His palette is remarkable for its innate sense of color - open, saturated, vibrant, resonant, intense and abundant in modulations. Ashot Khachatryan came to the triumph of painting plasticity, having evolved from an open, dazzling bright color to a more muffled sound of it, abundant in shades, what don’t prevent color from remaining a determining value in graphic paintings structure - as exactly noted by Professor Vera Razdolskaya.

Turning to his favorite genres of portrait, still life, landscape, Ashot each time finds a new painting-plastic solution for the most expressive way of a form disclosure, whether self-portrait, portraits of loved ones, still life with flowers and fruits, especially landscapes, theme of which is Armenia.

With the amazing art of painting artist writes mountains, trees, houses and temples, recreating the unique character of his native land during flowering spring, purple autumn or hot summer. With the same success and apparent easiness he solves difficult color problems, working especially brilliantly in the range of green and red colors.

Interesting observation is made by the writer and artist Irina Dudina: there are some cases when in Ashot’s paintings we see “almost abstract painting, but for some reason it gives us the feeling of ultimate recognition and truth”.

This exhibition, which displays masterpieses painted during a stay in one of the most beautiful cities of Italy - Florence - reveals new facets of Ashot Khachatryan’s picturesque talent, gives an idea of him as an amazingly clean, bright and friendly person, always open to admire the beauty of nature and companionship.

Luiza Tselischeva, Art PhD,
Research Museum of the Russian Art Academy