Regina Ghazaryan

Regina Tadevosi Ghazaryan (Armenian: Ռեգինա Թադևոսի Ղազարյան; April 17, 1915, Yerevan — November 6, 1999, Yerevan) was an Armenian painter and public figure. She is also known as Yeghishe Charent's friend and benefactor, who saved many of the poet's manuscripts during the regime of Stalin.[1]

Biography

Regina Ghazaryan was born in a family of an Armenian Genocide survivor from Van and a noble mother from Yerevan (Khorasanyans).[2] She met the poet Yeghishe Charents in 1930. At the age of fifteen, Ghazaryan, an orphan, had "in some sort been adopted by Charents as both an intimate friend and a witness to his solitary hours".[3]

Regina Ghazaryan's plaque on Baghramyan Avenue, Yerevan

In 1937, from the prison cell Charents had secretly informed his wife Izabella that she should trust all of his writings only to a family friend, artist Regina Ghazaryan and she will save them from being destroyed.[4] After Charents's death Regina Ghazaryan hid and preserved many of his manuscripts (7000 lines in total[5] including "Requiem to Komitas", "The Nameless", "Songs of Autumn" and "Navzike") in the garden and in the 1950s granted them to the Charents Museum of Literature and Arts. As a military pilot she participated in World War II.[6] She finished Yerevan Fine Arts Institute in 1951.

In 2009 a memorial plaque was inaugurated on the house at Baghramyan St. 33a, Yerevan where Regina Ghazaryan lived and worked from 1961 to 1999.

Ghazaryan's paintings are exhibited in various museums of Armenia, including the National Gallery of Armenia. She was a member of the Painters' Union of Armenia.

Awards

Works

Personal Exhibitions

Books

Publications

References

  1. ↑ Первая полоса, Литературная газета
  2. ↑ Hakop-Agha by Eduard Avakyan
  3. ↑ Yeghishe Charents: Poet of the Revolution, Marc Nichanian, Vardan Mattʻēosean, Mazda Publishers, 2003, p. 12
  4. ↑ A Labor of Love in “Vision of Death”: RFE/RL gives account of Charents’ last years, ArmeniaNow
  5. ↑ Հավերժ Չարենցի հետ
  6. ↑ Арпеник Чаренц очень осторожна — как говорят в народе: “страх пуще смерти”
  7. ↑ Honorary citizens of Yerevan, www.yerevan.am
  8. ↑ Armenian concise encyclopedia, Vol. III, Ghazaryan Regina

External links