Arsen Navasardyan, Armenian painter and scene designer, was born in 1989, when Armenia's peculiar political reality left its mark on nearly every corner of daily life. In those years, the H. Igityan Centre of Aesthetics stood as one of the only places in Yerevan where children drawn to creation could gather and find a genuine space for sharing art. It was there that Arsen was fortunate enough to encounter the master Ara Gurzadyan, the teacher through whom he first began to truly know art.  Gurzadyan's personality, as much as his artistic vision, left a profound and lasting influence on young Arsen. He later continued his education at the university, working within the world of theatre and cinema. Yet for a long time, he could find no real satisfaction in the existing art world of Armenia — a milieu he had to navigate and socialize within, but where recognition depended less on talent or hard work than on old Soviet-era mechanisms: membership in the painters' union and carefully cultivated relationships with an established art community whose vision could barely be called artistic, let alone contemporary. It was the pathos of these figures — a way of presenting art that left viewers feeling spoken down to rather than invited in — that made Arsen realize he had no desire to belong to any such community.

What he wanted instead was to build a space of his own, where new knowledge and the continuous exchange of ideas would never be something to fear. It was only through working with children that he came to understand what truly mattered in art. That understanding eventually led him to found Navasard Art Studio, a space shaped entirely by his own conviction that art education should nurture curiosity, freedom of thought, and sensitivity rather than obedience to formula. At Navasard, children learn drawing, painting, clay art, sculpture, animation, linoprinting, and mixed media, and are even guided in bringing their physical work into the digital world. At Navasard, mistakes are not failures to correct but essential steps toward discovery, and there is no single correct answer to arrive at. For Arsen, this is the very essence of contemporary art education — protecting a child's imagination from the same rigid hierarchies and inherited pathos. Through Navasard, he continues to build the space he once searched for himself: one of openness, honesty, and genuine artistic exchange.

Photographer: @davgalstian

The Studio: https://www.navasardi.com/studio/