The ancient civilisations of Italy and Egypt have provided a backdrop for the development of Armen Agop's work. “Just as Egypt was a good place for a sculptor to be born, Italy,” he says, “is a very good place for a sculptor to live.” His sculptures are ascetic in form and rich in spirituality; pure shapes, defined by strong lines out of which other figuration is excluded, leaving you with the bare essentials. Tracing Agop's entire oeuvre, it is clear that black granite is the material dearest to his heart: “In Pietrasanta, I tried to carve marble but I didn't feel it the way I do with granite which is a very neutral material that is beautiful and sweet at the same time,” he explained. The Egyptian-Armenian sculptor celebrated winning the Presidential Medal of the Italian Republic last month at the closing ceremony of the 40th round of the Sulmona Prize for Contemporary Art in Sulmona, Italy; just one more award to be added to his pile of honours. The exhibition opened on 7 September with 125 artworks representing over 20 nations, all displayed in the civic museums of diocesan Sulmona. According to Agop, “the Sulmona Art Prize is a prestigious award that has been in existence for 40 years, one of the oldest in Italy. The list of jurors includes some of the most prominent art critics in Italy.” Organised by the Circle of Art and Culture “Il Quadrivio” (The Crossroads), the 40th round had a particularly impressive jury chaired by Vittorio Sgarbi: Ivo Bonitatibus, Ennio Calabria, Carlo Fabrizio Carli, Toti Carpenters, Giorgio Di Genova, Massimo Pasqualone, Giorgio Seveso, Chiara Strozzieri and Duccio Trombadori. Born to Armenian-Egyptian parents in Cairo in 1969, Agop graduated from the sculpture department of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt (1987-1992), before which he was apprenticed at the studio of the painter Simon Shahrigian (1982–1987). From 1997 to 2000, he was granted on an Assistant Researcher scholarship, teaching at the Faculty of the Fine Arts. He first arrived in Italy in 2000 after winning the Prix de Rome. He felt at home in the ancient city but also recognised the cultural heritage of Pietrasanta, a mecca for sculptors worldwide since Michelangelo built the roads for extracting marble from the local mountains. The town gained in popularity in the 20th century when world renowned artists like Henry Moore and Isamu Noguchi made their stone sculptures there. Today it has seen work by Damian Hirst, Anish Kapoor, Marc Quinn and many others... But Agop's story began long before he saw it. “I think my interest in art started like many kids with drawing, because that's the most available when you are a child. The difference is that I never found a good reason to stop. The chance to make sculptures came later. I remember I was 15 and I was visiting the studio of two friends who were students of fine arts and they had clay in their studio. I just couldn't leave without a piece of clay.” He has this to say about the connection with ancient Egyptian art, which he says with complete conviction and without thinking: “Simple, granite, eternal, internal energy and stretched surface... Art in ancient Egyptian civilisations wasn't concerned with imitating nature, it was more concerned with creating a strong presence; sculptures with a strong presence embodied a perfect shape the divinity of the gods. Simple forms contoured by a very strong line defining a shape (volume) firmly from the surrounding space, almost giving up the outside world preferring to its relations with its own self...” The same is true of Agop's contemporary sculptures, which seem abstract at the first glance because they don't make you recall something you know or recognise, but soon you realise they are real strong presences, like cosmic signs. Agop decided to settle down in Italy after wining the State Prize of Artistic Creativity: The Rome Prize. “I spent over a year working in Italy, between Rome and Pietrasanta. Near the end of 2001, I was invited to exhibit in the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. The work was well received by the curators, and at the same time I received the second prize for sculpture in the Florence Biennale.” It was then that he began to think about continuing to work in Italy, a decision that was made easier by offers to show in galleries. Around that same time he was invited to the International Sculpture Symposium of Comblain-au-pont in Belgium for 2002. “The Rome Prize, has had the biggest impact on my life because it opened many doors and introduced my work throughout Europe,” he pointed out. In 2010, he received the international Umberto Mastroianni award in Piemonte, where he won the coveted prize for his monumental fountain. “I was very glad to be invited to the seventh Biennale Internazionale di Scultura della Regione Piemonte; from the biennale, a jury selected the winning project, and honestly I wasn't expecting that my project would be selected. This is because of the long history and heritage of fountains in Italy, and my very serene and sober design, I thought it would be too Sufi for the Italian taste but I did what I wanted anyway and it was received very well. It wasn't only selected by the jury but was then voted by the residents too. The significance of this award for me is of carving a fountain sculpture in Italy which has the most famous fountains in the world,” he says. Agop's participation in international biennales and symposia is not confined to Italy, however. In 2006 when the Coral Spring Museum of Art in Florida decided to make a sculpture park, they invited five sculptors to represent five continents; Agop was invited to represent Africa. In 2008, he was awarded the KKV Bohuslan Stone Grant in Sweden, “the sculpture grant” given once a year to a prominent international sculptor by the Swedish organisation KKV in Bohuslan, which chooses one sculptor every year from all over the world. He is also proud of participating in the Aswan International Sculpture Symposium (AISS) in 2000, when he carved a rose granite sculpture inspired by an organic form flying in the air, currently on show at the Aswan Open-Air Museum. He had been part of the symposium since 1998, when he participated in the symposium's first workshop for younger artists. Agop is concerned with the present conditions of sculpture in Egypt and has suggestions that can help to improve the situation. He believes that the 1980s was the beginning of the deterioration of the sculpture department in the Faculty of Fine Arts because students who used to enrol to the department were those who failed to join the painting or architecture departments and that 99 per cent of the faculty students are not talented and have nothing to do with art whatsoever but their secondary education marks stopped them from going to a faculty of their choice. “Joining any faculty of art must be based on talent and designing a comprehensive interview for the applicants would help, so would making it a requirement for them to pass a practical and theoretical entry exam,” Agop says. “It is shameful that a country like Egypt which possesses such a number of graceful Pharaonic sculptures and is known to all the European sculptors as the cradle of that art — for instance, at the Louvre the ancient Egyptian section is the first — should be without a sculpture department in most of its faculties and universities. The Egyptian Ministry of Culture should support emerging sculptors and provide them with studios in appropriate places where they can freely break their stones and use their machines and tools without fear of disturbing the neighbours; it should subsidise the tools and materials they need for their creativity.” Agop called for reviving the old idea of the Luxor Marsam (or Studio), a sort of an artists' residence for three months; the artist stays there at the expense of the state to create a piece of art. Agop feels, however, this should take place all across Egypt and not just in Luxor. He also suggested spreading a project like the AISS in a large number of Egypt's governorates, increasing the number of galleries that are designed particularly to show sculpture and trying to raise public awareness of that art. Armen Agop's works are on permanent show at the Egyptian Modern Art Museum, Egypt, the Aswan Open-Air Museum, the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar, Villa Empain/Boghossian Foundation in Belgium, the Giardino di Piazza Stazione in Barge, Italy, the Coral Springs Museum of Art in Florida, USA and the Bozzetti Museum in Pietrasanta, Italy.
