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Lot Essay
The Earthworks Series of Armenian artist Marcos Grigorian are highly symbolic for their minimal yet powerful aesthetic. This work comes from the collection of the late prestigious Armenian private collector of Armenian artists who would eventually help Marcos Grigorian open a permanent exposition in the Oriental Museum in Yerevan. He purchased works, among this present one included, under the advice of Shaen Khachatryan, who later would become the director of the Armenian National Gallery.
Composed of a square-format canvas, the work is composed of soil, earth and paint that alludes to a barren landscape, evoking a sculptural quality within two dimensions. The series relates to the cosmic forces of nature in heaven and earth, spirit and matter, referencing to when Earth and other forms developed over the course of millions of years by mere dust and gas. Out of the deadness of the earth emerges life forms, the rough texture of the soil begets life. Referencing the sacred geometry through the repetition of squares and the circle, the square being the symbol of the earth and the circle of the heavens. The spiral alludes to the idea of the center of the canvas and expands outwards, representing the unity and continuity of the universe.
Born to Armenian parents in 1925, Marcos Grigorian emigrated to Iran where he studied fine art, travelling to Rome where he completed his studies at Academia di Bella Arti and eventually moved to New York in the 1960s where he began the infamous Earthworks series that saw him move toward Minimalism. Inspired by the Minimalist works of American artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman or Donald Judd, Grigorian adopted motifs, namely of the square and circle, that became recurrent within his multiple works of this period and was even used on the poster of his solo exhibition in the Iran-America Society in Tehran in 1971.
Grigorian’s art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, the British Museum, the Grey Gallery of NYU, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Gallery, the Near East Museum in Armenia, and the Nelson Rockefeller Collection.
Composed of a square-format canvas, the work is composed of soil, earth and paint that alludes to a barren landscape, evoking a sculptural quality within two dimensions. The series relates to the cosmic forces of nature in heaven and earth, spirit and matter, referencing to when Earth and other forms developed over the course of millions of years by mere dust and gas. Out of the deadness of the earth emerges life forms, the rough texture of the soil begets life. Referencing the sacred geometry through the repetition of squares and the circle, the square being the symbol of the earth and the circle of the heavens. The spiral alludes to the idea of the center of the canvas and expands outwards, representing the unity and continuity of the universe.
Born to Armenian parents in 1925, Marcos Grigorian emigrated to Iran where he studied fine art, travelling to Rome where he completed his studies at Academia di Bella Arti and eventually moved to New York in the 1960s where he began the infamous Earthworks series that saw him move toward Minimalism. Inspired by the Minimalist works of American artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman or Donald Judd, Grigorian adopted motifs, namely of the square and circle, that became recurrent within his multiple works of this period and was even used on the poster of his solo exhibition in the Iran-America Society in Tehran in 1971.
Grigorian’s art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, the British Museum, the Grey Gallery of NYU, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Gallery, the Near East Museum in Armenia, and the Nelson Rockefeller Collection.