Leon Hovsepian

At 83, Worcester's pre-eminent artist continues to produce work filled with social commentary

by Leon Nigrosh

Surrounded by the ordered clutter of his drawings, paintings, and memorabilia, in his third-floor loft, Leon Hovsepian talks in his usual quiet manner about a recent trip to the Grand Canyon. He explains how he and three friends walked all the way to the base of the gorge carrying a rattlesnake in a gunnysack because local Native Americans had given it to them. To emphasize his story, he gets up from his chair, goes over to his latest painting, and points to a little squiggle. "There, see right there? That's the Colorado River. We had to climb all the way down there to return the snake safely to the wilds."

Like this panoramic work, Beauty Is Its Own Excuse for Being, each of this 83-year-old artist's paintings has a story to tell. One of Worcester's pre-eminent painters, a former Worcester Art Museum teacher, and still engaged in his work every day, Hovsepian, in his words, "has done it all" -- plein-air landscape watercolors, mythic stories produced in oils or encaustic, and acrylics laden with veiled social commentary.

Because his readable representational impressions easily strike a chord with so many viewers, he has been sought after for decades to create architectural-scale murals and has had his work shown in major museums and galleries across the country. Now, Worcester residents have a chance to see Hovespian's talents at a UMass exhibit now open that features the work of a man who never lost touch with his roots.

A life-long resident of Worcester and virtual fixture in the local art community, Hovsepian and his Armenian immigrant family moved from Pennsylvania to Worcester when he was two. As he grew, his grandmother -- a former language professor at an American college in Istanbul -- taught Hovsepian to read by having him quote passages from both the Old and New Testament. To be certain that he understood what he was reading, she made him illustrate each passage -- thus planting the seeds of what was to become a career in art.

When he was nine, he had his first look at the Worcester Art Museum. "I got a feeling that this is where I could be an artist." Soon after, he started taking children's art classes. Encouraged by WAM's popular art teacher, O. Victor Humann, to take classes with the adults, the teenage Hovsepian's work was often held up against that of the adults. ("If this kid can do work like this, then you grown-ups should be able to, too." Hovsepian recalls his teacher saying to fellow students). Because other WAM staff appreciated his work, Hovsepian received scholarships to complete the WAM program. Later, he was awarded an unsolicited scholarship to pursue a bachelor of fine arts at Yale.

Hovsepian returned to Worcester in 1941 and debated over either immediately striking out on his own as a painter or taking a job he was offered at WAM. Fortunately for generations of Worcester artists, the trustees convinced him to teach, which he did for 40 years. Teaching at WAM took the pressure off to produce bread-and-butter paintings, allowing him the time to methodically experiment with different materials and to explore some of the emerging trends. Serious forays into Abstract Expressionism ("You had to paint what the critics wanted"), color field painting ("All flat surface and eye-boggling"), and even a taste of Pop Art ("A parody of real life"), convinced Hovsepian that these styles were inadequate for him to employ as he continued to paint personal expressions of his deeply ingrained beliefs in family values and moral concepts. Although he may create his works with either alkyds, temperas, or oils, his paintings are often filled with interesting characters and always graphically energized.

As Hovsepian's popularity in the community grew, he was called upon to create more and more of his remarkable mural installations and occasional works in sculpture and stained glass.

One of his well-known works came in the early '40s when he was commissioned by local architect Stuart Briggs to paint a mural for the grand ballroom at the Bancroft Hotel. This 20x20' painting depicts the life story of Worcester historian, Secretary of the Navy, and founder of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, George Bancroft (1800-'91). Among the numerous vignettes, there is a portrait of Bancroft in his uniform along with landscape images of Annapolis and Worcester's Bancroft tower.

Hovsepian remembers it more because of the troubles he had installing it at the posh Franklin Street hotel. Hovsepian recounts, he and his young wife, Mary, spread the canvas out so that they could cover it in formaldehyde, preventing it from rotting. As they painted away, a large group of hotel visitors walked into the room and tromped across the canvas without a second thought.

When the Bancroft was converted to offices and apartments in 1964, more-thoughtful people contacted Hovsepian and returned the mural to him.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the fabulous murals he created at the Aurora Hotel around the same time. These very long, narrow works include impish impressions of Greek gods (The hotel owners at that time were Greek), mythic creatures morphing into humans, and vibrant dancers situated within several Worcester landmarks. The canvases now lie beyond restoration, folded and disintegrating in a heap somewhere on Cape Cod.

These signature public works, and their attendant publicity at the time, brought Hovsepian to the attention of national gallery and museum directors. And over the years, he has had exhibits at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Whitney in New York. His work is in the permanent collection of WAM, the Fine Arts Collection in Washington, DC, and in the Museum of Modern Art in Yerevan, Armenia. People are always wanting to view his latest works, some of which are now on display at the UMass Medical School Gallery .

His Grand Canyon painting is among them. Hovsepian has created more than just a photographic reproduction of an awe-inspiring natural phenomenon. Amazed by the underlying geometry of nature, he saw land masses that, over the eons, had dissolved into a series of cones by the relentless Colorado River. He was reminded of Cezanne's (1839-1906) admonishment to remember the cones, cubes, and spheres inherent within the nature world. Hovsepian has imbued his shapes and shadows with clandestine figures -- among them a king, a queen, and a child -- a family unit, which Hovsepian regards as the basis of life.

Also currently on exhibit, is an equally symbolic painting, executed in a style reminiscent of Mondrian's 1912 linear multiple-image Flowering Apple Trees, which features three women in classic nude poses. The title and theme is a play on the three Graces of ancient mythology. Hovsepian shows his Three Races as white, black, and mulatto. "We all come from the same place. We're all made from each other," he says.

His dynamic and brilliantly illuminated Kiss of Peace, though apparently depicting a joyous scene of embracing priests, takes on an ominous cast when the cathedral wall is recognized as bull's eye. The painting is his comment about those thrust into the limelight becoming an unwilling target for the disaffected.

Another canvas tinged with social commentary is Great Brook Valley Before. This large work evokes a genteel image of earlier times when the bucolic area was a pleasant canter for a group of horse riders -- with Hovsepian's own house, which actually overlooks the area, appearing on the horizon. Today, of course, the pristine meadow has been supplanted by subsidized housing.

Although Hovsepian is primarily interested in using paint to bring his thoughts to reality, he is not averse to doing reasonably realistic portraits. He has been asked to do many such canvases, including Worcester Central District Court Judge Morris N. Gould, the Fallon Clinic's Dr. John Fallon, and Anthony "Spags" Borgatti. And he recently finished a sofa-size family portrait showing the entire group playfully engaged in outdoor activities.

Not content with working in only two dimensions, Hovsepian has designed the chapel and produced a fresco, a mosaic, and a sculpture of the Virgin, for the Willimantic Retreat House, in Connecticut. In 1950 he designed the home he still lives in today. It is a delightful surprise of modern design nestled comfortably among the more stodgy dwellings off Burncoat Street. Aside from providing plenty of open-plan living space, it also serves as his studio, showroom, and gallery for many of his earlier works -- including a full-length portrait of his violin-playing wife, painted with great sensitivity shortly after they were married. In many ways this house is a reflection of the person who designed it. It is modest, open, inviting.

After more than 65 years of painting, Hovsepian remains an important figure in the arts for his experience, extensive knowledge, and indomitable strength of character. He still serves as an excellent role model for generations of artists to come. He continues to spend his days in the manner he has always encouraged his legions of students to emulate. He experiments with mediums, reads, produces work with compassion, and, above all, shows his work wherever and whenever he can. As this stalwart of the art community so sagely explains, "After all, it takes both the artist and the audience to make a work of art come to life."