“To speak of Hovhannes Sharambeyan is to speak of our generation, because we studied together, grew up together, worked together, and created together.

“There are people whom it is always a pleasure to meet. They are those who are passionately devoted to their work, who are invariably cheerful and kind. Such was Vanik Sharambeyan, a passionate lover of the folk art of his homeland.

“Everyone who knew him, everyone who came into contact with him, and, even more so, those who became his friends, affectionately called him Vanik. ‘They say,’ ‘he was’… It is very difficult to speak of Vanik Sharambeyan in the past tense. The pain of the loss is still so fresh.

“Whenever I met Hovhannes, or, as everyone called him, Vanik Sharambeyan, I remembered an old group photograph he had once given me. The photograph must have been taken in Yerevan in 1917 or 1918. It shows a group of young men from Van, all neatly dressed in black suits, starched shirts, and ties.

“He was not merely an artist. He was a gifted, versatile painter and a cultural figure in the broadest sense of the word. He possessed a great heart and divided that generous heart among others. The modest Vanik, the Vanik who deprived himself for the sake of a purpose, accomplished a great deal and achieved remarkable results.

“His kind of presence—as a human being, as a unique type of person—no longer exists. I would like to see a ‘second Vanik’ in our reality, but there is none, none…

“Hovhannes Sharambeyan, or, as he was commonly known, Vanik Sharambeyan, was a talented painter, a bearer of ethnic culture, and, most essentially, an honest, kind, and infinitely loving human being.

“Vanik was an extraordinarily interesting personality, sincere and direct. He was a versatile painter, a true artist-master.”

“Vanik occupies a distinctive place in Armenian realist art. But for me, his works are, above all, paintings of human beings. It is true that aesthetics is not a human category, but Vanik’s works are profoundly human works.”

“Hovhannes ‘Vanik’ Sharambeyan will remain in the memory of his contemporaries not only as a painter, but also as an exceptionally active and energetic person, a man of great kindness and broad social interests.

“A posthumous exhibition of any artist inevitably directs one’s thoughts along a particular path and imposes a particular tone. Only here can one understand what he meant to culture, what he took away with him, and what the irreversibility of that loss truly means.