Chronology
Ashot first captured the attention of celebrated professional artists while he was still very young, a teenager. Amongst his first teachers and mentors was a gifted sculptor and painter who had spent his youth in Paris, living and working side by side with Picasso and Léger. He imparted to Ashot, over a number of years during which he strove to guide the impressive young talent, all of his considerable knowledge about the time, life, efforts, ideas and struggles of Picasso’s generation – of that heady time of revolution in art.

Ashot’s extraordinary early ability to paint, his prolific output and natural gifts, brought him into close continuous contact with many of the most respected artists and influential creative groups that then existed, in the late 1960s. Here he was able to absorb a wealth of knowledge, develop the habits and discipline that would serve him throughout his professional career, and also gain many useful social connections.

Eleonora Maklakova, a leading member of one of these groups, who has been for decades an internationally acclaimed professor in the Russian, European and American art & design community, said of the time when Ashot first arrived in Moscow: “It was indescribable, how much excitement he generated, as if something otherworldly has descended upon us. Here was this young man, this boy, really, who had walked out of the mountains, out of some remote wilderness, and who painted like a god.”

When he was choosing what direction to pursue in Art, Ashot decided to align himself entirely and uncompromisingly with the Art for Art’s sake school of painting: in other words, he became a Purist. Not for him the ideologically-charged allegiances of pro-Communist “anti-bourgeois” Socialist “Realism” (which of course has little to do with reality). Instead, Ashot chose to follow the aesthetically demanding, coherent, whole approach to painting that relied upon clarity of vision and communicative ability; Beauty; Harmony; an expressive, fluid, fluent continuation of the traditions of Romanticism and Impressionism (the Barbizon School) that had been interrupted by the revolutionary zeal of 20th century ideological fanaticism and cant, by self-serving artists who believed their names were more important than what they delivered to the world. Ashot would have none of pandering to the so-called proletariat, or the futile attempts by self-styled modernists to replace Beauty with anything but the Beautiful: chaos, obscenity, incoherence, empty space, cheap tricks.

Refusing to pledge allegiance to Communism, Ashot did not become a member of the official Soviet Artists’ Union. He only joined the Union of Artists once the system that had enshrined the Hammer & Sickle had collapsed, and been replaced with the historically authentic Double-headed Eagle. In all the years until that once-unthinkable development, while the Soviet monolith remained in the eyes of so many ‘invincible,’ Ashot acted entirely independently, with no recourse to any system of support. His work paid for his existence. He found admirers and collectors amongst the connoisseurs that still populated Moscow, or travelled there for business, amongst screen stars and diplomats (chiefly from the European countries, where the traditions of fine painting had never flickered out) – and even amongst the relatively few (and yet essential) wealthy entrepreneurs who still operated in Russia, even during Communism’s darkest days.

Thanks to their support, the young Ashot could continue to purchase the necessary materials that allowed him to continue constantly to become better, to grow as a painter, while carefully preserving the traditional methods which he zealously studied while scrutinising the magnificent collections of the principal museums of Russia’s capital cities.

Other professional artists, academics, connoisseurs were quick to recognise, in Ashot’s paintings, the remarkable promise of young genius. It was evident in the vividly eloquent, captivating, richly varied and exquisitely rendered brushstrokes; in the intensity and refinement of the colours (independently of the overall spectrum of the image); in the beauty of arrestingly selected backgrounds; in the brilliant, striking mastery of Composition; in the juxtaposition of elements, and in the interplay of proportions, and perspective.

In 1982, Ashot was invited to join a privileged group of artists travelling by agitpoezd (a special celebrity-studded train intended to visit remote, strategically vital regions of the country in order to inspire the workers busy there completing important projects) to the BAM – the final section of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Baikal-Amur Trunk Line, known in Russian as Baikalo-Amurskaya Magistral, hence the acronym: BAM. (This was a project that had been conceived as far back as the reign of Nicholas II; it took all those years to complete because of the wars, but also because of the vast wilderness that had to be overcome.)

The two weeks on the train, and the two months spent in the region, were a landmark moment in Ashot’s life. He developed a close friendship with the great composer Mikael Tariverdiev, as well as many others who were travelling with them. Siberia was exquisite to behold. After a few weeks’ time among its spectacular landscapes, Ashot founded a museum in one of the region’s central cities, Tynda, and left them a gift of 48 paintings created right there. It was a sensational development: a museum in a remote part of the country, where people were used to having to travel for many, many, many days to reach any place with a museum of any kind.

Back in Moscow, Ashot found himself in the heart of the social whirl of the bustling metropolis. He was friends with all the leading lights of the time. The homes of the Scriabines, Shakhnazarovs, Vertinskys, Leonid Filatov, Aleksandr Pankratov, Dzhigarkhanyan, Tariverdiev, Yuri Antonov were among his constant haunts. He was at the same parties where Vysotsky and Okudzhava and Akhmadulina first earned their reputations. He spent hours in conversation with Petrosyan, with Chilingarov, with Slobodyanik. There wasn’t a door in all of Moscow that could be shut to him.

At the same time, he knew his personal situation to be sensitive. Ashot belonged to the small, strong community of Muscovites who made no secret of their reverence for the memory of the last Emperor of Russia. To hold such views was not without dangers. It put one in the company of certain powerful men – men who eventually attained supreme power, in 1999 -- but men who were themselves running great risks, back in the 1980s, and courting danger. When it was still a highly dangerous thing to do, Ashot was freely distributing Bibles, books of an overtly religious or anti-Communist content, the imperial Russian tricolour that would in 1991 replace the hammer-and-sickle flag of the USSR… These bold actions could literally have ended his life. But in his heart of hearts, Ashot was utterly convinced that the light of truth, as reflected in history, would eventually, inevitably overcome the darkness of theomachy and deceit, that had enslaved the Russian population. Being by nature extraordinarily courageous and principled in everything, he could not, would not make any concessions to the powers-that-were.

Risks taken often draw attention to the risk-takers. In Ashot’s case, his principles did capture someone’s attention, together with his talent – only it wasn’t the attention of dangerous persecutors that would have placed the life of the resolute anti-Communist in jeopardy. Rather, it was the attention of such enlightened figures as Raisa Gorbachev…. She, her friends, and many of her circle understood perfectly that Communism was doomed, that nothing but collapse lay ahead for a system based upon an ideology of class hatred, on lies and calumny, on the perversion of historical truths, on travesties of common sense, and above all: on isolationism, on forcing hundreds of millions of human beings to live shut off from history, from the basics of true Culture, from the very pillars of Civilisation itself – as well as from the physical world – through the twin absurdities of the materially present Berlin Wall and the psychologically enabled Iron Curtain…

In 1986, the unimaginable happened. The Chernobyl nuclear accident shook the whole world to its core. No sooner had the media of the USSR confirmed the fact of an accident having taken place, than Ashot went to the nearest branch of the Sberkassa (where Soviet citizens were allowed to keep accounts) and wired a sizable contribution addressed “for direct aid to the victims of Chernobyl.” It was a blatant challenge to the system: at the time, it was considered inappropriate for citizens to take it upon themselves through personal initiative to ‘correct deficiencies’ in the workings of the system, since it implied the relevant authorities lacked competence to do so. Immediately, this gesture captured the attention of the press. The following morning, Ashot woke up to a phone call from a friend: “You’re in the paper.” Millions of fellow citizens followed Ashot’s example, and so the Chernobyl Fund was launched.

The following Christmas, eight months after the tragedy (although back then, in 1987, ‘Christmas’ was still a word that could not be uttered in any official sense, one of the leading newspapers, Komsomolskaya Pravda, included a feature article about Ashot, entitled ‘At the Artist’s Studio’ (KP, 7 January 1987). The large photo illustrating the story showed Ashot with a particular painting that was subsequently acquired by Mrs. Gorbachev.

Encouraged, later that year Ashot formally requested the Union of Artists to grant him permission to hold a public exhibition of his works, that up until that time had only been seen in private viewings and at closed events. The administration of the Union of Artists refused to grant the permits necessary for a public event. Disappointed, Ashot told the obdurate bureaucrats: “You leave me no choice but to seek opportunities to show my paintings in America.”
They laughed. It seemed impossible. Yet the words proved prescient…

In 1989, Ashot was waiting for a visa to the USA. His huge blatantly anti-Communist work, Triptych, (in which a faceless crowd marches with the hammer and sickle above them, shattered) was shown all over the entire Soviet Union on the popular morning TV show, Express-Camera.

Ashot’s first official, public exhibition (not counting the museum he founded in Tynda) took place, as he had predicted, in the United States of America, in the summer of 1990, in one of San Francisco’s most prestigious Union Square galleries, on Maiden Lane. Over 40 paintings by Ashot were shown, over a period of many weeks. After spending more than two years winning permission (1st) to leave the Soviet Union, and (2nd) to enter the USA, Ashot had only been able to obtain the latter, and to come to California, thanks to the intervention of its US Senator Pete Wilson (later Governor of the Golden State).

In California, naturally enough, Ashot’s paintings aroused a very lively interest from the start. He was bombarded with offers, commissions, and opportunities to show his work. It was sufficient for him to show the paintings to get the positive reaction he required – a far cry from the norm, as any professional artist will attest.

But Ashot’s uppermost concern was not the marketplace of paintings, not cultivating a wealthy clientele, not currying favour with anyone, not chasing ephemeral glory – not even when his studio began receiving visits not just from Raisa Gorbachev, but from distinguished Americans as well.

Ashot remained consumed with a single purpose: the perfection of his technique, making better and better paintings, mining new reserves of creative force from within himself, opening his mind to new horizons and new ways of creating.

There were ongoing exhibitions of Ashot’s paintings in the most reputable galleries surrounding San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego; in the popular resort communities of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Del Mar, La Jolla, Palm Desert, Scottsdale…In one of the most stunning exhibitions, 34 works by Ashot were exhibited alongside 125 master works of French Impressionism (works by Millet, Corot, Daubigny and other leading artists of the Barbizon School). Ashot’s work fit in beautifully with this stellar collection – a detail not lost on a number of notable American collectors present.

In 1995, an extraordinary show of 108 important paintings by Ashot took place in a stunning San Francisco venue.

In 1996, the Consul General of the Russian Federation invited Ashot to take part in a special exhibition of the five best known and most prominent living painters of Russia, in a lavish, corporate-sponsored event that lasted all summer as part of the official celebrations marking the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, as well as the celebration of Russia Day for the newly freed Russian state.

In 1997, in one of the most elegant hotels on Wilshire Boulevard, at the Pacific Coast, in Los Angeles, a massive show of 130 masterpieces by Ashot was held, with the support of the Gorbachev Foundation and some distinguished medical faculty from the area, to raise funds for the improvement of medical care for Russia’s neediest paediatric patients.

By 1999, paintings by Ashot were being shown, sold and collected by sixteen of the top galleries of the Western United States, especially in California. Ashot was receiving letters from Nancy Reagan (who had included his art in the Ronald Wilson Reagan Presidential Museum and Library, in Simi Valley), as well as from other key figures in past American Administrations; he was frequently a guest in the homes of prominent American entrepreneurs, both with established capitalist dynasties as well as the next generation of business leaders. At the end of that year, Ashot was invited to help plan & organise the official Los Angeles Millennium Celebrations.

Yet it was still his own studio that Ashot preferred to every other invitation. He was devoted to his art with a single-mindedness that meant you could find him working at his easel on any given day of the year, almost invariably from early morning to late into the night. Even when he consented, on two occasions, to grant television interviews to the Russian media; even when he appeared, from time to time, on the TV or movie screens of Russians in Russia, it was always, exclusively, about The Art.

In 2000, a group of professional Hollywood actors began turned to Ashot in their search for an authentic theatre production of a Chekhov play, in English, using the best available American talent. In 2001, Ashot personally financed their production of Uncle Vanya, which played for several weeks at the Century City Theatre, under the aegis of the Sacred Fools Theatre Company (which did not however contribute any funding). It was a stunning, classic staging, with Brenda Strong, David Paul Needles and Lauren Daniels in the lead roles, and graced by beautiful costumes and paintings provided by Ashot. This Chekhov production was the talk of the cognoscenti as well as the European producers who had flown in expressly to see some real Chekhov.

Later that fateful year, 2001, tragic events of a monumental scale unfolded in the USA, leading to an intense period of national mourning during which little of consequence happened on the cultural scene.

Over the course of 2002 and 2003, however, at the request of some committed activists for peace, Ashot organized an exhibit of over 60 of his own paintings to benefit their pro-peace efforts. The organization on whose behalf Ashot engaged in this and other similar cultural initiatives gained momentum during that time, and rapidly grew to a 3.5 million member association, known to the whole world as MoveOn.org.

Ashot actively took part in five of the biggest anti-war marches that took place during those years in San Francisco, as well as cities around the world.

In 2005, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, took notice of Ashot’s paintings, and found them to Her liking.

In 2007, Ashot began to live in London.

At the present time, details are being finalised for two major exhibitions of his work, to take place in Moscow, and in London.