MONUMENTS

Architect: Romeo Julhakyan
Sculptor: Ara Sargsyan
Material: bronze, basalt

The group sculpture of Sahak Partev and Mesrop Mashtots, the founders of Armenian writing, scholarship and translation art, is located in front of the central building of Yerevan State University. It is 6 m high. Sahak Partev was the 10th Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church, during whose reign, in 405, Mesrop Mashtots created the Armenian alphabet, which marked the beginning of the development of the Armenian written language, scholarship and translated literature.

The solemn ceremony of the monument took place in 2002.

Ara Sargsyan created the “masterpiece of his compositional ideas” in 1943 from plaster, was finally edited and transferred to wood in 1946-1947, in 1948 it was cast from bronze, in 1962 from plaster (one and a half life-size), in 2002 the final bronze version was created with a basalt pedestal (according to the initial decision, it was to be installed in front of the Matenadaran).

The monument uses the traditions of Armenian medieval statuary sculpture with great skill. The sculptor has individualized and made more meaningful the two figures, which are identical in silhouette and composition. Partev is religious, calm, even a little self-contained, and Mashtots is fiery, but with restrained direct enthusiasm. The work, in addition to its high aesthetic qualities, also has a deep ideological and semantic value. Without separating these two important symbols, the author has shown his vision of the existence, preservation, creation and development of the nation, through the strong connection of religion and language, in other words, science and church.