Jak Ihmalyan

Jak İhmalyan (Armenian: Ժակ Իխմալյան, July 30, 1922 in Istanbul, Turkey - April, 1978 in Moscow, Russia) was a painter, political activist, poet, and professor of Armenian origin.

Biography

His father Garbis was from Konya and his mother from Kayseri. His father Garbis Ihmalyan was also an amateur painter. Renowned Turkish painter Abidin Dino, who was in close relations with Garbis, recognizes his son as having a potential of becoming a great painter. Dino soon thereafter became a tutor to Jak Ihmalyan. In 1936, Jak graduated from a private Catholic Secondary School, then he attended a French high school, and finally graduated from a Turkish High School. In 1939 he actively participated in communist revolutionary activity by sympathizing with the Turkish Communist Party, TKP. However, he continued to paint in his workshop in Istanbul. In 1942 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Painting Department of Istanbul. After he gained his diploma, he was arrested for his political activities in 1944, after being set free, he was arrested again in 1946. He spent a total of nearly 4 years in prison. In 1948, at the end of his detention, he continued painting image building and started to write poetry. He began painting for the Armenian children's magazine "Bardez" or garden in Armenian. He also worked for the newly founded Armenian "Nor Or" newspaper. In 1949 he married Marie Abacigil and bore his first son Vartan. After gaining his passport, he went to Lebanon where he remained there for seven years. He became an art teacher to a few art academies in Beirut. At one point, he and French painter Simon Baltax painted a billboard called "Friendship of Peoples" for the airport in Beirut.

In 1956, Jak Ihmalyan travels to Warsaw, Poland, he worked as a caricaturist for the Polish Communist Party.He made banners in honor of Nazim Hikmet's famous poem "Güneşi içenlerin Türküsü" or Ballad of the Sun Smokers. Jak Ihmalyan and poet Nazim Hikmet were considered close friends.

Jak Ihmalyan soon moved to Beijing, China in 1959. He worked for the Communist radio's and studied Chinese folkloric and contemporary art scene.

In 1961, he went to the Soviet Union where he remained for the rest of his life. He worked as an editor for the first two years on the radio. He was appointed as a lecturer at Moscow State University in 1963 in the Institute of Eastern Languages of Turcology. His workshop was located in the street of Taniyevih Arbat in the lower floor of an old building. He organized various exhibitions in Moscow from 1968-1978. In 1974 he became a member of the Soviet Union Painters Committee. Jak Ihmalyan died in April 1978 at the age of 56, in Moscow but had his body cremated in Yerevan.