Aragats, 1925

Sarian devoted much attention to the ploughman’s character. Being a son of the farmer, he had faced the difficulties of earning the bread from his childhood. The large-sized painting ‘Aragats’ seems to be the pictorial reflection of Armenian folk song ‘Horovel’. (Song of a ploughman).
The viewer can see a multi-aspect panorama with the violet mountain tops of monumental Mt. Aragats towering above the horizon. From the picture’s depth we see a ploughman with a plowshare in his hand and yoked oxen walking towards the viewer. With its basalt heaviness Aragats highlights hard and at the same time so vitally important and sacred labor of a plowman. The following words of Sarian are the key to the picture’s main idea: ‘ My aim is to reflect the tangible existence of our little country that has witnessed plenty of disasters and was repeatedly defiled but sanctified with blood and belief. This rocky piece of land on the slope of Aragats is a source of hope for me.
I want to show the world that this mountainous country exists and holds a small yet hard-working and talented nation with its ancient spiritual values, symbolizing its heroic history’.