Yenovk Der Hagopian
Yenovk Der Hagopian was a 20th-century American-Armenian artist, sculptor and musician.
Personal life
Yenovk Der Hagopian was born in Ishkhanikom, Western Armenia, near Van, Turkey. His father, Hagop, was a priest at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. During the Armenian genocide, Yenovk and his family fled to Yerevan with the help of an American missionary. In 1916, he studied art in Tiflis, was later employed with the Near East Relief Foundation, and served as the director of two orphanages in Nor Bayezid and Yerevan between 1918 and 1923. Der Hagopian walked with a limp his entire life, carrying a bullet in his leg from his time in the military during the February Uprising. He married Nevart Kalarchian in August 1948, and later moved to Yonkers, New York together where they lived for over a decade.Art career
In 1923, Der Hagopian immigrated from Turkey to United States, eventually settled in Boston, and later met Arshile Gorky in Watertown, Massachusetts who found him a job at the Hood Rubber Factory. He also attended courses at the Massachusetts School of Art studying painting and drawing, in addition to the Copley Society Art School. In 1930, Der Hagopian moved to New York City and during the 1930s he participated in group exhibits and solo exhibitions, with his modern oil paintings featured in both New York City and Boston. Most of his subjects were religious, and many focused on the Armenian genocide of 1915. In 1939, he created Night in Exile, a carving which depicts the plight of an Armenian family; he later painted a piece with the same title.During the 1960s, he produced seven carvings – made of wood, stone, and metal – replicating the architecture of ancient Armenian churches, which entered the collection of the Armenian Museum of America after his death. The New York Times reviewed the church sculptures, commenting that Der Hagopian preserved Armenian heritage in the work, as each sculpture represented a scale model of the principle churches and monasteries of old Armenia - including some dating to the third century AD. His largest models would take up to three weeks to complete, using photographs and blueprints of the churches for the inspiration. Years later, a large portion of his unknown work was rediscovered by his granddaughter during a home renovation at the end of the twentieth century.
Der Hagopian is also well known for his carvings, specifically Armenian khatchkars. His magnum opus, completed in 1985, is a large intricately carved wooden khatchkar featuring images of his hometown in Van and his late family.