He was a painter and sculptor and for 20 years used his “Studio 14” at 13 Hratchia Kochar Street in Yerevan, the city where he was born in 1931.

The building is still occupied by artists whose conditions are even more precarious than in Soviet times.

After studying at the “Panos Termezian” School of Fine Arts from 1954 to 1958, he exhibited in the Soviet Republic in 1960.

In 1962, when he held a solo exhibition in Tbilisi (Georgia), the Pushkin Museum in Moscow acquired his plaster sculpture entitled “Holé-Hop”.

He graduated from the Yerevan Institute of Art in 1963. The Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow bought two bas-reliefs on wood in 1968: “The Bakers” and “Horovel.”

Two other wood carvings: “The Spinner” and “The Little Shepherd” were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in Budapest in 1970. Also in 1970, the twenty-by-eight meter pediment on Gumri station, which at the time was called Leninakan, was inaugurated. In this station, which is the work of architect Raphael Eghoyan, he also made a monumental clock in chiselled copper: “The twelve signs of the zodiac.”

Vashken I, the Catholicos, exhibited in his personal residence in Etchmiadzin a woodcarving entitled, “The Song,” that he had bought from the artist in 1970.

The same year the Museum of Modern Art in Yerevan exhibited “Maternity,” a 80 centimeter by 1 meter sculpture in tuff, and a two-meter high sculpture in copper called, “The Flight,” was completed in 1978.

Sarkis Yukhanian is, however, best known for “eIkar,” a twelve-metre high sculpture in wrought copper, which greeted the cosmonauts at the entrance of the “City of Stars,” the top secret training centre north-east of Moscow, which had its heyday at the start of the Space Age in the 1970s. This military complex became the “Yuri Gagarin Training Centre” and was returned to civilian use in 2009.

He also made four friezes for the façade of the Yerevan Opera Theatre, two of 30m by 2m, and two of 15m by 2m, which have delighted passers-by since 1980.

In 1985, Ayoum train station commissioned him for an 8-by-3m bas-relief in copper.

As monumental artist, he also worked for the Republic of Armenia and in 1996 created the décor for the “House of the Writers” in Tzakadzor. Illustrations of the Tales of Hovhannes Tumanyan “A Drop of Honey,” “The Dog and the Cat,” “Grikor,” “The Invincible Rooster” four bas-reliefs of 6 metres by 4 metres decorate the façade, while inside, “The Victory,” “Peace,” and “The Famous Armenians” keep watch, gathered on a bas-relief of ten metres by three metres.

For some time now Sarkis Yukhanian had been returning to his first love, painting, where, as if reunited with a lost source of happiness, his sensitivity, long stifled under the sculptor’s chisel, blossomed in a structured composition with an unbridled choice of colours. He died in his studio in August 2010, two months after the exhibition that the museum had dedicated to him for the first time in Paris.

Frédéric Fringhian