Ariel (Haroutiun) Agemian was born in Brusa, Turkey, in 1904. He was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, during which he witnessed the death of his father and was separated from his mother and brother. The Mekhitarist monks first took him to Rome and soon brought him to Venice where he studied at the Moorat Raphael College until 1922.

In 1926, he graduated from the Venice Academy of Fine Arts with a Gold Medal award from the Associazione Artistica. He worked and taught in Italy until 1931 and then in Paris until 1938.