Vahram Davtian

Vahram Davtian was born in 1961 in Vanadzor, Armenia. He is an artist who moves between magical realism and the absurd. His artworks come from a clear and smart technique which shows a dreamed and strange world full both of irony and nostalgia. The artist skillfully uses all these artistic devices in order to bring to the foreground the main idea of his canvases—the depiction of plasticity. Vahram’s paintings can be certainly called “plastic passages”. The notion of plasticity in the real world implies the smooth malleability of matter that creates an impression of the slowing of time and unhurriedness of events. This is exactly how the characters of Vahram’s appear—indolent and contemplative, imposing and graceful at the same time. The development of possibilities of the figurative plasticity leads the artist into the world of carnival costumes. He creates his works with the method of multilayered painting, the very same that was used by the “Old Masters” and the only one that allows to convey the depth of colors and to reflect the maximum of their gradations. The perfect mastery of the technique leaves the artist more time to develop the subject matter and to submerge into the world that he created and to study its laws. The artist sees life as a theater stage where each of us perform our roles and relays with elaboration the stories he creates this way. In his works, he presents his characters dressed in spectacular and elaborate carnival costumes embellished with fantastic accessories within a multi-layered atmosphere where the time slows down and the space becomes vague. Vahram Davtian won the "Best Painting" Award (Fantastic Art Museum, Switzerland) in 2000 and "Prix D'excellence, Nouvelle Dimension" Award (Monaco) in 2012. He also awarded “Arshile Gorky Gold Medal”, (Armenia) in 2013.