About Ruben Grigorian

“A painter of symbols, that always mean something different on the canvas than in real life. The meaning of each painting is a mystery to be revealed by the onlooker” Born in Yerevan in 1954 Ruben studied at the Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts. Young and open minded, the future artist freely explored a wide range of artistic schools and they all had an impact on the formulation of his unique style. Ruben’s art is constantly evolving, being a reflection of the artist’s permanent search for new ideas. The most important thing in art for Ruben is the idea, its originality and innovating force. The artist’s own description of his works is simple: thoughts written with a brush on the canvas. Ruben is the type of artist, who, once having started a new painting, immediately visualizes the final result. He spends more time working on the sketch rather than on the painting. Ruben turns the process of creating a sketch into a casting. All the objects, people and natural phenomena that interest him at the moment are invited to take part in the casting. From them he chooses the ones that excite him the most and then combines them all in the sketch. A person of many talents and boundless energy, Ruben has also created illustrations for more than 30 children’s books. He worked as an Art producer at Yerevan Youth Theatre for five years (1983 1988). Since 1985 Ruben has been a member of the Artists’ Union of Armenia. Since 2000 he has been working at the National Cinema Center (Yerevan, Armenia). Ruben was also one of the founders of Yerevan Puppet Theatre. As Grigorian confesses, he never had any inner conflicts. As soon as he gets tired of one occupation, he immediately passes to the other. All the above mentioned diverse aspects of his life are equally interesting and dear to him.