Varteni Mosdichian
1953– · Armenian American painter based in Boston
Varteni Mosdichian (born 1953 in Istanbul) is an Armenian American artist based in Boston. Her work revolves around Armenian themes that appear more or less explicitly, shaped by a family history of deportation, exile, and the massacres her grandparents suffered, whose roots lay in Kayseri and Bafra.
She was educated in Istanbul, at Armenian schools and at the Austrian Saint George Gymnasium. At sixteen she moved to Boston, where she attended Lynn Classical High School and gained an early acceptance to the California Institute of Arts. In 1979 she graduated from the College of Fine Arts at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. During the 1980s she taught art and Armenian language at the AGBU school in Watertown. Her biography is listed in the 1999 Who's Who of American Women.
Works such as "Towards Embracing", which uses explicit symbolism, sit alongside more subtle pieces such as "Peasants against the Wind", in which kneeling peasants are bowed but not humiliated. Her exhibition "Palimpsest, History In Drawers", held in Istanbul, treats everyday life as a palimpsest where past and present overlap. Her works are held by the Museum of Modern Arts in Yerevan and the University of Central Florida.