VARBOART
Aleksander Bazhbeuk-Melikyan
A Soviet Georgian artist, graphic designer and sculptor of Armenian origin (1891 – 1966). Alexander Alexandrovich Bazhbeuk-Melikyan was born in Tbilisi, Georgia. In 1903, he began his studies at the School of Art and Sculpture of the Caucasus Society for the Encouragement for the Fine Arts.[1] Here he made the acquaintance of a fellow student, Lado Gudiashvili. In 1910, he travelled to Moscow to begin training in the studio of the artist V. N. Meshkov. The following year, he joined the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.
In 1913, Bazhbeuk-Melikyan was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army, and spent the World War I years on the Odessa front.
In 1917, he returned to Tbilisi and began his own independent artistic career.
Bazhbeuk-Melikyan is noted for his depiction of the female figure: magicians, jugglers, exotically costumed women, and nudes. Like his friend Gudiashvili, he painted voluptuous women, but his were more intensely executed and more passionate. He led a quiet protest against the prudish Soviet authorities who had a puritanical attitude to sex. Influenced by Böcklin, he created carefully finished canvases; later works, inspired by Rembrandt, were more luscious. His works were executed with dynamic and impulsive strokes and infused with colour, following the colorists of the previous centuries.
