Fifty drawings were shown at an exhibition of works by the Moscow graphic artist R. L. Khachatryan, held at the House of the Union of Artists of the USSR on Gogolevsky Boulevard. The works on view date from the previous five or six years, a period when, after a long search, the artist made his final choice: he turned to portraiture, working primarily in pencil.
R. Khachatryan’s portraits are precise and rigorous in form. His finest works possess psychological depth. They are distinguished by the elegant, artistic handling of a delicate silvery line and by the absence of a fully developed setting or environment. Khachatryan works within the traditions of classical art. His subjects are actors and scholars, artists and children.
In addition to pencil portraits, Khachatryan draws extensively in red chalk and charcoal, drawing sauce and sepia. The exhibition of his works, held at the House of the Union of Artists of the USSR on Gogolevsky Boulevard from October 18 to November 11, 1978, introduced viewers to a number of interesting people—our contemporaries. The artist portrayed them with great sensitivity and skill.
