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Lot Essay
In the 1950s, there was a lot of excitement amongst European press about an Armenian artist who claimed to be able to make sculptures smaller than the eye of the needle. A sceptic German newspaper reader wrote the artist a challenging letter. He received a reply hand-written on human hair...
Edward Ter Ghazarian is considered to be the founder of micro miniature art, sculptures invisible to the naked eye. He created his first micro miniature from his mother's hair when he was very young and created over 600 of such works throughout the course of his life. He exhibited world-wide, including in Los Angeles at the Armenian pavilion of Soviet exhibition. This exhibition was incredibly well received by the visitors, they even called his works ''the 8th world wonder" as published in the Los Angeles Times on 21 November 1977. He created works such as the world's smallest backgammon board constructed on a halved grain of rice, and a statuette of Charlie Chaplin inside the eye of a needle, the figure was made from a piece of the same needle and his walking stick from a piece of cobweb. He also made miniature figures of animals in cages from bits of colourful Armenian stones and depicted them inside a single black horsehair, and a bust of Napoleon made of ivory, the size of a quarter single grain of sugar. Ter Ghazarian is also the only artist who ever managed to create asynchronously moving micro sculptures. He created a set of figures which performed a play inside a human hair and he reconstructed the scene from Gulliver's travels with the Lilliputians on a similar scale, it took him 18 months to complete this work. All the instruments Ter Ghazarian uses to create his miniature masterpieces are made by him.
Besides being a 'micro-sculptor' Ter Ghazarian was one of the leading musicians of the Philharmonic orchestra of Armenia for many years and created 30 musical instruments. He built a violin measuring 7 millimetres, the world's smallest working violin. A man of many talents, he was also an outstanding caricaturist, a sculptor and he designed and developed medical instruments to perform bloodless surgery.
This miniature sculpture is inspired by the Venus de Milo of c. 100 BC in the Louvre, Paris. The original statue was discovered in 1820 on the island Melos in the south-western Cyclades and is thought to be by the illustrious yet mysterious Alexandros of Antioch. This work is a fantastic example of Ter Ghazarian's talent and is a real miniature sculpture, nearly as thin as a hair. The artist even managed to emulate the twist in Venus' body and the projection of her knee, her right in contrast to the sculpture in the Louvre.
Edward Ter Ghazarian is considered to be the founder of micro miniature art, sculptures invisible to the naked eye. He created his first micro miniature from his mother's hair when he was very young and created over 600 of such works throughout the course of his life. He exhibited world-wide, including in Los Angeles at the Armenian pavilion of Soviet exhibition. This exhibition was incredibly well received by the visitors, they even called his works ''the 8th world wonder" as published in the Los Angeles Times on 21 November 1977. He created works such as the world's smallest backgammon board constructed on a halved grain of rice, and a statuette of Charlie Chaplin inside the eye of a needle, the figure was made from a piece of the same needle and his walking stick from a piece of cobweb. He also made miniature figures of animals in cages from bits of colourful Armenian stones and depicted them inside a single black horsehair, and a bust of Napoleon made of ivory, the size of a quarter single grain of sugar. Ter Ghazarian is also the only artist who ever managed to create asynchronously moving micro sculptures. He created a set of figures which performed a play inside a human hair and he reconstructed the scene from Gulliver's travels with the Lilliputians on a similar scale, it took him 18 months to complete this work. All the instruments Ter Ghazarian uses to create his miniature masterpieces are made by him.
Besides being a 'micro-sculptor' Ter Ghazarian was one of the leading musicians of the Philharmonic orchestra of Armenia for many years and created 30 musical instruments. He built a violin measuring 7 millimetres, the world's smallest working violin. A man of many talents, he was also an outstanding caricaturist, a sculptor and he designed and developed medical instruments to perform bloodless surgery.
This miniature sculpture is inspired by the Venus de Milo of c. 100 BC in the Louvre, Paris. The original statue was discovered in 1820 on the island Melos in the south-western Cyclades and is thought to be by the illustrious yet mysterious Alexandros of Antioch. This work is a fantastic example of Ter Ghazarian's talent and is a real miniature sculpture, nearly as thin as a hair. The artist even managed to emulate the twist in Venus' body and the projection of her knee, her right in contrast to the sculpture in the Louvre.