GYUMRI, Armenia
With its narrow streets and historic buildings from the Soviet era, Gyumri, Armenia’s second-largest city, located near the Turkish border, has been an artistic hub for many years.
Among the many art galleries and museums in the landlocked nation’s cultural capital, Artush Mkrtchyan’s gallery stands out with its unique graphics, posters, paintings, and Soviet household glasses.
The story of Mkrtchyan, 63, owner of the Style Art Gallery, though, is as interesting as the artworks exhibited in the two-story building.
Telling how he decided to launch an art gallery, Mkrtchyan says he used to own a textile cooperative business, operating both in Armenia and abroad, decades ago, before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
“We made a lot of money and we had to spend it,” he said, explaining that the currency was quickly depreciating due to the Soviet collapse.
Mkrtchyan studied at the Fine Arts Faculty in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, and was interested in painting, which is why he decided to invest the money in the arts, he said.
“We had the opportunity to put together this collection,” he continued.
“And with the artworks in our collection, we launched the first Armenian exhibition in the Russian Art Museum on March 8, 1991,” he recalled.
Boasting around 11,000 graphics, posters, glassworks, and paintings, Mkrtchyan decided to launch a gallery to preserve them.
The gallery currently attracts many visitors from both Armenia and abroad, including from neighboring Turkiye, especially during the summer.
Graphic works, mostly coming from Armenian artists as well as Russian and European ones, are on display.
“This is the most unique graphic museum from Moscow to the Near East,” Mkrtchyan stressed.
“Our collection has around 1,200 paintings. Artworks from 14 countries, including Armenia, are currently on display,” he added.
Turkiye-Armenia normalization push
When asked where he is from, Mkrtchyan says he was born and raised in Gyumri, but his grandfathers, who were millers, came from Mus, in eastern Turkiye.
“I have been to Mus and Sason (now in the Batman province) many times,” he said, remembering the times past when the Turkish-Armenian border was open.
Adding that he used to live very close to the train station, he said he remembers trains bringing people coming and going from Istanbul two or three times a week.
“Some Turks were coming here on Fridays and going back to work on Mondays,” he recalled.
Although he himself never had the opportunity to travel to Turkiye by train, he said he took flights from the capital Yerevan to Istanbul around 20-30 times before they were halted for two years, and now just recently restarted this month.
“But my relatives would travel to Turkey by getting a visa from Moscow for three weeks,” he said. “It was pretty easy.”
“Of course, there were some bureaucratic problems as well. But the border, in general, was free,” he said.
Amid the recently started talks between Turkiye and Armenia towards normalization, with the prospect of reopening the borders on the table, he said: “The closed border has never benefited any country.”
“There may be conflicts, tensions. May God not let us go through the same things again,” he said.
“Diplomatic relations, open borders, these are necessary for all countries.”
He said that many times he saw how Armenians brought goods from Istanbul by train and sold them in Gyumri.
“During the Soviet era, all Armenian products, except food, were very popular in Turkey. Boxes of socks, et cetera, were taken to Turkey from here,” he added.
“When Armenians and Turks share bread, it can give a different energy to their relationship. Things like cursing or hitting each other won’t happen anymore,” he said.
“When the borders are opened, there is a woman who is 40-50 years old, the owner of a restaurant in Kars. Its goose meat is very famous in Turkey and Europe. I will take the train and go there to eat that goose,” he added.