Home Modernists Alexander Bajbeuk-Melikian Biography
Biography
Alexander Bazhbeuk-Melikov

Born in 1891 in Tiflis, in an Armenian family; spent his all life in Tbilisi.

In 1910, after graduation the Tiflis Sklifasovski School of Painting and Drawing he continues studies at Moscow V. Meshkov Studio and St. Petersburg
Academy of Arts.

In 1917 he returns to Tiflis and teaches at first at M. Toidze Studio (1911-29), after at Tbilisi Art Academy.

In 1910-20es Bazhbeuk-Melikhov was the active participator of Tbilisi avant-garde life. He works together with the Futurists including the Armenian
Futurist poet Kara-Darvish, Georgian artists and literary figures - David Kakabadze, Elene Akhvlediani, Lado Gudiashvili, poets -Titsian Tabidze and Paolo Iashvili. He works in book graphic design and illustrations of art journals. 

The main sphere of his activities in painting, rather refined and distinct with colorist thinking; apart from the paintings created with rather impulsive and dynamic strokes, he can be regarded as the follower and inheritor of outstanding colorists of 18th -19th centuries, French romanticists and impressionists with his artistic personages (acrobats, circus actors, nudes, etc.) who reflect emotional charm of mundane beauty.

Being extremely modest, Bazhbeuk-Melikhov seldom participated in exhibitions; in 1936, after being accused of formalism and refusal to portray
Stalin, he was excluded from the Artists Union (in 1938 he was restored to the membership as politically reformed). He was less and less engaged in public life. However, he was a man of principle: once he even destroyed all his paintings because they were praised by a person unacceptable to him. He often burnt paintings due to the lack of space to keep them. He permanently kept only 111 paintings.

He died in 1966 in Tbilisi.