I remember Herman Vahramian and those afternoons spent in the Gallery in Milan talking about the contamination between Western and Middle Eastern culture. A thought is a research well represented in his art as a sculptor, where small clay figures tell of Iran where everything is made with clay, life itself said so: the earth in such strong colors becomes bricks for building churches, synagogues, minarets and tombs.
Figures in continuous travel, accompanied only by a progressive number, emblematic figures, figures that are born from the mind and compose themselves. Figures made of earth but without their own land.
The status of art and man today can be represented with the image of a shattered mosaic: this is what Herman wrote in his introduction to the exhibition at the archaeological museum in Milan in 1987/88.
A particularly cultured man, one of the best-known intellectuals of the Armenian community in Italy and in Europe. A theorist of the "diaspora of the mind", he has written numerous essays on the cultures of different countries. Born in Tehran in 1940 of Armenian parents, Vahramian was an Italian citizen. He lived and worked in Milan where he graduated in architecture at the Polytechnic in 1961. He left us in 2009.
It is his sculptures that tell us about different people in an extraordinary coexistence between peoples and cultures. A story made up of continuous transfers, escapes and persecutions. An identity traffic jam that is smuggled for social and political progressivism, for ethical and philosophical equality or for multiculturalism.
We refer to a text by Herman Vahramian published in the magazine Life and Thought which introduces us to the true history of the gypsies and which can help us today to better understand what has changed.
