Armenian Library and Museum of America
Caroline Ly- Program and Administrative Manager
65 Main Street, Watertown MA 02472
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Fax: 617-926-0175
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ALMA Acquires Paintings by Armenian Artists
>From the Dodge Collection of Soviet Art
Watertown, Mass.- February 21, 2013 – The last three decades of the
Soviet
Union witnessed a tremendously rich and productive art movement that
stands as a stirring example of the individual’s ability to achieve
self-expression despite the oppressive constraints of a totalitarian
state.
Remarkably, it was due largely to the concentrated
efforts
of one man, Professor Norton T. Dodge, that world attention was
attracted to the movement, support was provided to the artists, and a
huge collection
of the resulting art work was established in the United States.
The Armenian Library and Museum of America is fortunate to
have acquired eight paintings by Armenian artists from the collection,
thanks to the generous donation arranged in December by Nancy Ruyle
Dodge, Norton Dodge’s widow.
The works donated to ALMA were painted slightly later,
during the momentous period spanning the period from the last years of
the Soviet Union to the early years of the Armenian Republic, from
1988 to 2005. The artists represented are Armen Adikhanian, Felix
Eghiazarian, Vartan Gabrielian, Sarkis Hamalbashian, Ashot Kazarian,
and Samuel Khachikian.
Professor Dodge began to visit the Soviet Union in
1955, soon after Nikita Khrushchev’s rise to power, to conduct
scholarly research in his academic field, Soviet economics. Contact
with one or two of the non-conformist artists there aroused his
interest and led him to explore the movement more comprehensively and
to purchase paintings. This was not easy in the Soviet Union of the
time, when Socialist Realism was the only accepted form of art, and
non-conformist artists had to work clandestinely, making
it difficult for them to earn a living.
Professor Dodge’s crusade to contact these artists without
the knowledge of the authorities and without endangering the artists
themselves, as well as his ingenious means devised to purchase
paintings, many of them very large in size, and ship them to the
United States, makes a fascinating story. It has been described in
publications such as John McPhee’s
New Yorker articles, subsequently expanded into the book titled The
Ransom
of Russian Art (1994).
Though generally categorized as “non-conformist,” the art work
produced during this period was rich and eclectic, encompassing
different historical, philosophical, religious, and national roots and
exhibiting
aspects of Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and other
avant-garde movements.
The collection eventually grew to over 20,000 works
representing more than 2,000 artists and is widely considered to be
the largest collection of its kind in the world. Included are works by
artists from throughout the former Soviet Union, including over 1,000
works by more than 100
artists from Armenia.
In 1986 the bulk of the collection was donated to Rutgers University
in New Brunswick, NJ, where it is housed at the Zimmerli Art Museum as
the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Non-Conformist Art from the
Soviet Union. The richly illustrated book, From Gulag to Glasnost,
edited by Norton Dodge and Alla Rosenfeld (1995), provides a
comprehensive description of the collection. Paintings have been
donated also to the Davis Center at Harvard University and to the
Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.
To amass this large collection, Professor Dodge
depended on several associates, prominent among them the Paris art
dealer Garig Basmadjian, who specialized in the paintings of Armenian
artists. The association continued until one morning in 1989, when
Basmadjian left the Moscow hotel where he had been staying in the
company of two young men, never to be seen again. It has been
suggested that his disappearance was at the hands of the Russian
mafia, or the state security forces (or a combination of the two), but
the case has never been solved.
“We feel extremely fortunate to have these wonderful
paintings at ALMA, in memory of Norton Dodge and celebrating
everything he accomplished for Soviet artists,” commented ALMA Vice
President Barbara Merguerian. “We are proud of our diverse
collections, and these striking works add a valuable new dimension to
our holdings.”
ALMA is making plans to mount an exhibit of the new
acquisitions in September.
The Armenian Library and Museum of America is located at 65 Main
Street in
Watertown MA, 02472.
Contact: [email protected] or 617-926-2562
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