| Harutyun Kalents (Galentz) | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Harutyun Gharmandarian |
| Born | March 27, 1910 Kyurin, Vilayet of Sebastia, Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey) |
| Died | March 7, 1967 (aged 56) Yerevan, Armenian SSR, Soviet Union |
| Nationality | Armenian |
| Field | Painting, Drawing |
Harutyun Kalents (Armenian: Հարություն Կալենց), was a prolific Armenian painter, born on March 27, 1910 in the town of Kyurin, present day Turkey.
Kalents was born in Kyurin, Ottoman Empire (present day Turkey) on March 27 of 1910. His father Tiratur owned a wool-dying factory which left a profound impression on young Kalents with its vats of bright colors. In 1915, during the Armenian genocide, Kalents’ father was taken away by Turkish soldiers, never to be seen again. Kalents along with his three brothers and mother escaped to Aleppo, Syria. A few days after their arduous trek into Aleppo, Kalents’ mother died of starvation and fatigue. Kalents and his three brothers spent their childhood and youth in an Aleppo orphanage. Despite the hardships of life in the orphanage, Kalents began cultivating his passion for arts in part by encouragement from one of the orphanage sisters. He often escaped the orphanage to roam around the Aleppo markets and paint.
In 1922, at the age of 12, Kalents left the orphanage to become an apprentice to a lithographer and later received his primary artistic education from Onik Avetisyan in Aleppo. He then followed his brothers to Tripoli, Lebanon where they had opened a photo studio. Kalents painted backgrounds to be used in the photo sessions. From 1929-1933, French painter Claude Michulet was his teacher in Beirut Academy of Fine Arts, where he then taught painting until 1939.
Kalents was awarded the Medal of Merit by the presidium of International Exhibitions in New York in 1939, and the honorary prize by the government of Lebanon for his bas-reliefs in the Pavilion of Lebanon presented at the New York International exhibition.
In 1938 he took into apprenticeship a young woman by the name of Armine Paronyan (Kalents), whom he later married on May 2, 1943. Armine became a prominent Armenian painter alongside her husband.
Kalents and family expatriated to Yerevan, Armenia in June 1946. The next year he participated in a group show organized to exhibit the works of newly expatriated painters. He participated in group exhibitions organized by the Artists Union, of which he was a member since 1947. He held several solo shows both in Yerevan and in Moscow and was posthumously awarded Armenian Republic’s (SSR) State Prize in 1967.
Kalents’ house in Yerevan is now a museum. His paintings are also in the collections of National Museum of Armenia (Yerevan), Republic of Armenia’s Cultural Ministry as well as private collections in Moscow, St. Petesburg, Tbilisi, New York, Paris, Vienna, Beirut, Aleppo, Cambridge, San Francisco, Los Angeles to list a few.