Gago

Gago (Gagik Arakelyan) was born in Armenia in 1965. He studied at Hakob Kojoyan Art School between 1975-1979. After receiving specialization training on iconography in Moscow between 1983-1985, he started to study sociology and philosophy at Yerevan State University in 1987. The artist has been living and working in Spain since 1994.

In Gago’s works, we see the dream world of a child; colorful, bright and anonymous. Nothing has materialized yet and everything is in a constant state of change, a process of searching that will continue for a very long time. This budding world, which has just begun to take shape, is both learning under the strong influence of many things around it and constantly evolving under the influence of its basic instincts. It is precisely at this stage that we encounter the purest form of the instinct to laugh, which no one has ever taught us and which has been with us since the moment we were born. While the artist’s paintings make us smile by warming us with the colorful and fantastic atmosphere of childhood dreams, where all possibilities intertwine and all kinds of strangeness are possible, they also emphasize the value of preserving this most innocent and pure state on the way to returning to one’s essence.

Gago received the first prize in the Henrik Igityan National Center for Aesthetics (Armenia) Young Artists Competition in 1980. In addition, the artist won the grand prize in the Montgat Y Rechac (Spain) Art Competition held in 1998. Gago’s works were exhibited in various group exhibitions in Armenia, Russia, Spain, France and the USA between 1991 and 2017. The artist held his first solo exhibition in Spain, where he settled in 1994. Until 2018, Gago held around 15 solo exhibitions in various galleries in Spain, France, the USA and Russia. His artworks are part of vast number of private collections all over the world.