On Easter of 1963, Yakov Zargaryan, an Armenian pianist, professor, and art collector, received a visit from his neighbor — a neighborhood boy named Nikol, who came to deliver Yakov’s mail and proposed they play a traditional game of egg tapping. The 1960s saw the height of the space race, so Nikol painted a rocket, along with an astronaut in a suit, the sun, the moon, and Mount Ararat on his Easter egg using only three colors: black, red, and white.
Despite the prohibition on celebrating religious holidays in the Soviet Union, egg tapping remained a cultural tradition, especially in countries like Armenia, where Christianity was an important part of national identity.
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Zargaryan was so impressed with Nikol’s painting that he asked if he could keep the egg. Although Nikol did not give it to him, it was this experience that inspired Zargaryan to start his collection of painted wooden eggs. Six months after Nikol’s visit, Zargaryan ordered a spinning top for his son, Arno. While at the woodturner’s studio, he saw wooden eggs and ordered a couple for himself. Recalling Nikol’s painted egg, he asked his artist friends to paint them for him.
“My brother Henrik accidentally saw me when I was coming out of the studio and suggested we go to a shop to buy basturma [seasoned, air-dried cured beef],” Zargaryan writes in his catalogue, published in 2013. However, since the shop was closed, Zargaryan and his brother decided to visit the nearby house of Martiros Saryan.
Zargaryan gave Saryan a wooden egg and asked him to paint it. According to Zargaryan, this request led to a philosophical conversation with Saryan, during which he asked him to depict life on the egg.
“Then, I will paint Armenia. For me life is Armenia,” Saryan responded. A couple of days later the egg was ready.
Zargaryan’s collection, which began with Saryan’s egg, now comprises about 1,200 eggs painted by 940 artists from more than 100 cities in 52 countries. The eggs were painted by famous Soviet-Armenian artists like Minas Avetisyan, Armine and Harutyun Kalents, Alexander Bazhbeuk-Melikian, Dmitri Nalbandyan, and Yervand Kochar, as well as other artists from all over the world — for instance, Japanese anime screenwriter and artist Kazunori Ito and Latvian painter Uldis Zemzaris.
I visited the home of Yasha Papik (Grandpa Yasha, in English, as everyone in the neighborhood called Zargaryan), where his son, Arno, and his grandson, Aram, currently live. There, Arno showed me his father’s collection and told me about his father’s life and how the collection came into being.
A museum-like quality permeates the apartment, which is filled with paintings on the walls, miniature sculptures, and other handmade pieces made of glass, clay, and wood. Arno explained that these were mostly gifted by his father’s artist friends. Zargaryan designed most of the apartment’s spaces himself to accommodate his collection. He also converted his piano into a desk, where he kept his tools and family photos, adding to the home’s artistic feel.
“My father was a very creative person. He liked to make everything himself; he designed the whole apartment and made it feel like a museum or an art gallery. Most of his friends were artists like him. Our apartment was like an art hub, they always partied here,” Arno said.
Yakov Zargaryan was close friends with the well-known Soviet-Armenian painter Minas Avetisyan. Arno told me that his father was proud of this friendship. He played a significant role in promoting Minas’s works, and the artist even painted Zargaryan’s portraits and gifted him a few paintings. Unfortunately, due to the economic crisis of the 1990s, the family was forced to sell some of these paintings.
Zargaryan meticulously catalogued and arranged his egg collection, tagging each one with the artist’s name and the date. The eggs are displayed in chronological order, starting with Saryan’s in the bedroom and progressing into the living room.
The collection comprises mostly oil paintings on wooden eggs, though some works are on actual eggshells. In addition to mediums such as gouache, tempera, ink, watercolor, felt-tip and ink pens, and pencil, several pieces use wood carving, ceramics, marble, and embossed materials. Along with the small eggs, the collection includes around 150 large pieces. Some artists incorporated screws, nails, cogwheels, bolts, fabrics, and even silver into their designs.
Zargaryan’s collection has been exhibited twice in Yerevan. For the occasions, he designed glass shutters with a unique mechanism that enables the eggs to rotate 360 degrees, providing a complete view of them. During a 2018 television feature on his collection, he expressed his dream of opening a museum in Yerevan that would showcase unique art collections in the same vein as his own. He noted Ruben Anghaladyan’s collection of plates painted by famous Armenian artists, along with other such collectors.
“Nowadays they take Yerevan’s old houses and build hotels and cafes. Armenians are not going to surprise the world with hotels or cafes, but such a museum can [surprise people],” Zargaryan said.
Yakov Zargaryan passed away in 2020 at the age of 94. Arno Zargaryan told me that he does not intend to sell or give away his father’s collection, but he would consider displaying it in a museum if the opportunity arises. Since the collection is housed in a private residence, it cannot be opened to the general public. For now, the family has hosted many guests to see these unique artworks.
Source: Hyperallergic.com