Lusik Aguletsi

Lusik Aguletsi (Լուսիկ Ագուլեցի); born Lusik Zhorzhiki Harutyunyan; was a Nakhichevan-born Armenian painter, ethnographer, and Honored Cultural Worker of Armenia.

Aguletsi was famous for being the last Armenian to regularly wear her traditional Armenian dress in Yerevan.

Biography
Lusik Aguletsi was born on May 31, 1946, in the village of Verin Agulis in Nakhichevan, to the Harutyunyan family; the last Armenians living in Agulis after the 1919 Agulis massacre committed by the Azerbaijanis. Her experience in Agulis was the inspiration for the character “Lusik” in the novel Stone Dreams by Azerbaijani author Akram Aylisli. In 1953, Aguletsi’s family moved to Yerevan. In 1963-1967, she studied at the Panos Terlemezyan Art College of Yerevan. During her studies, she was awarded a special prize by the "Avangard" newspaper. She was a member of the Artists' Union of Armenia from 1974.

Lusik Aguletsi's paintings are in museums and private collections abroad. In addition to painting, Aguletsi was an active ethnographer. She collected weapons, costumes, decorations, and ancient jars. Some of them were brought from her native Agulis and the rest from different corners of Western and Eastern Armenia.

Lusik Aguletsi died on July 13, 2018, at the age of 72.

Exhibitions
From 1968, Aguletsi participated in various republican exhibitions in Armenia and abroad.

Solo exhibitions

 * 1996 National Gallery of Armenia
 * 1997 Stepanakert
 * 1997 "Mkrtchyan" exhibition hall
 * 1999 Greece, Thessaloniki

Group exhibitions

 * 1977 Paris
 * 1977 USA
 * 1978 Germany
 * 1981 Iraq
 * 1983 Los Angeles, Detroit, Toronto, Montreal
 * 1985 Moscow
 * 1986 Japan
 * 1987 Greece
 * 1989 "Armenian Artists to the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund", National Gallery of Armenia
 * 1994 Belgium, Normandy, France
 * 1995, 1997 Symposium in Artsakh
 * 1998 "Contemporary Art on the Threshold of the 21st Century"
 * 2003 Minsk, exhibition dedicated to the Independence Day of Armenia
 * 2003 Exhibition dedicated to the "Armenia-Diaspora" conference

Awards and prizes

 * 1967 Award at the Transcaucasian Exhibition
 * 1968 The first prize of the exhibition of women artists
 * 1975 Prize of the Academy of Fine Arts of the Moscow All-Union Exhibition
 * Diploma of the RA Ministry of Culture
 * Diploma of Yerjan Municipality
 * 2003 Award for preserving universal values by the Mesrop Mashtots Cultural Center
 * 2010 Movses Khorenatsi medal
 * 2011 Lusik Aguletsi's book "Relics of the Past" won the main prize at the 4th Republican Book Art Awards, and also won the first prize in the "Book of Art" category of the CIS International Book Awards.
 * 2014 Honored Cultural Worker of Armenia
 * 2014 Gold medal of the mayor of Yerevan

Lusik Aguletsi House-Museum


The house on 79 Muratsan Street in Yerevan, where Lusik Aguletsi lived and worked for about 45 years, was turned into a house-museum on the initiative of family members. In the museum, folk concerts, painting, dance and master classes are organized. Adjacent to the museum is the Aguletsi Art Cafe, which features traditional Armenian cuisine with Agulis dishes.

Quotes
"Painting helped me to expand in different branches of culture, to see, perceive and appreciate the values created by our people, so I study folk culture, especially national holidays, rituals, costumes"

Work

 * Lusik Aguletsi "Relics of the Past", Yerevan, 2010.
 * Lusik Aguletsi "Yuri Samvelyan", Yerevan, 2012.

Literature

 * Lusik Aguletsi-Samvelyan, Yerevan, 2004, 90 pages.
 * Nazik Armenakyan, Armenian festive culture according to the works of painter Lusik Aguletsi, Yerevan, 2015, 408 pages.