Armine Kalents

Armine Kalents, also Armine Galents, née Paronyan (arm. Արմինե Կալենց, 18 August 1920, Damascus – 22 November 2007, Yerevan) was an Armenian artist, Honored Artist of the USSR.

Life Armine Paronyan was born on 18 August 1920 in Damascus, Syria. Her parents Tigranuhi and Sargis Paronyans were teachers originally from Adapazar, Turkey. The family escaped from the genocide and fled the Ottoman Empire. Paronyan’s father died when she was a baby, and her mother had to escape with Armine and her older brother Aram. They lived in Istanbul for six years until they moved to Aleppo, Syria in 1926. In 1938-1939 Paronyan studied in the studio of a famous painter Haroutiun Kalents. she opened a hall-studio to exhibit his selected canvases and worked in this studio until the last days of her life. In 1992, she opened solo exhibition in the Pan-Armenian National Center in Los Angeles. In this book, she draws a realistic portrait of the great Armenian artist of the twentieth century, Haroutiun Kalents, telling the story of their love and difficult family relationships.

In 2000, a retrospective solo exhibition devoted to Kalents’ 80th anniversary was organized at the Artists’ Union of Armenia. Her last exhibition was organized in the Hall of Albert and Tove Boyajians in State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia in October 2004.

Armine Kalents died on 22 November 2007 in Yerevan.