BIRTH OF ONNIG AVEDISSIAN

Onnig Avedissian was born in Brusa (nowadays Bursa) on November 21, 1898. At the age of two, he moved to Constantinople with his family, where he acquired his primary and secondary education (1904–1915). During the summers of 1920-1921, he was tutored by painter Serovpé Kurkjian (1872-1924), who enhanced his inclination for art.

With the support of his parents, Avedissian decided to study art in Europe. In 1921 he was enrolled as a student in the School of Graphic Arts of Vienna, where he studied until his graduation as an expert in etching in 1925. He married in 1922 and had a son. He participated in the annual salon of the Viennese Association of Artists in 1923 for the first time. He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome (1925-1927).

In 1927 he moved to Aleppo, and two years later he settled in Cairo. He made a name in artistic circles of Cairo and Alexandria as an etcher, and then he began his career as a sculptor. He taught at the Nubarian and Berberian schools in 1929-1934, and then in 1936-1941 at the Melkonian Educational Institute in Nicosia (Cyprus). He remarried in 1938. After Cyprus he traveled to Jerusalem, where he spent almost two years studying the collection of ancient Armenian manuscripts in the Armenian convent of St. James. This project was crucial for his artistic career, because he was able to invent a personal style of painting, which was a successful amalgamation of Byzantine-Armenian and Italian Renaissance stylistic variations.

During his lifetime, he had three private exhibitions in Cairo (1932 and 1943) and Alexandria (1934). He also participated in several group exhibitions including the salons of Cairo and Alexandria, also group exhibitions in Rome (1927), Los Angeles (1931, 1933 and 1934), Bucharest (1931), Cairo (1945 and 1958) and Alexandria (1953). He also participated in the First Biennale of Alexandria in 1955.

In 1965-1967 he created the paintings of the St. Nshan Armenian Cathedral of Beirut.

He worked on the renewal of Armenian typefaces and published Essay of Improvement and Modernization of Armenian Printing Letters (1946, in Armenian). He also published a comprehensive study in French, Peintres et sculpteurs arméniens (Armenian Painters and Sculptors), in 1959.

Onnig Avedissian passed away in Cairo on November 23, 1974.