7-28-17-89 (2002) Painting by Hratch Israelian

Hratch Israelian was born in Armenia, 1956.
He pioneered this painting technique 1972.
Hratch lives and works in Los Angeles since 1980.


This painting process is a replica of technology that has been developed by the Industrial Revolution. Why the Industrial revolution? Because the new shapes and surfaces that came out of the Industrial Revolution, have composed the cultural landscape of the 20th century.
Now the entire cultural landscape of the 20th century can leave its fingerprints through this painting process.

The 20th century began with technological transformations, which sparked the spirit of modernity, but modern paintings left out the technical part, when it aligned itself with the dynamics of the time, .

We have to go back 600 years, to find the last technical innovations in the history of painting. Back then, at the absence of camera and electronic communication, "painting was the main generator of social symbols". painting brought the world to people, taught them how to live in it, what values to adopt and what to believe.

Today armed with cameras and computers, mass media achieves more then that. Unlike painting, cameras and computers have revealed their public practical use, which generates universal efforts and resources, in their past 170 years of development.
Parallel of their practical use, this new tools created their own masterpieces of art.

Guided by these same economic and aesthetic principals, can we reinvent the painting process? If yes, how to use our hands and the viscous stuff called paint, to compete with magical technologies of our time? Let say, we succeed, can painting regain its old power by this?

Here is the easiest hand-painting process, that can bring together, great production speed, extremely low cost, unlimited size, and high quality, that cameras and computers have not yet produced, by synthesizing some of this together.

In other words, if painting is dieing artform, its last word has more value then the last brushstroke.

• Nationality: ARMENIA
• Date of birth : 1956
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Armenian Artists