Born in Fardoun Village, Iran, 1931. Lives and works in Toronto, Canada. Sirak Melkonian studied painting with Marcos Grigorian, a pioneer of Iranian Modern art. In the 1950s Melkonian along with artists E. Svarchian, R. Zarian and R.A. Hayrapetian was associated with Studio Démon, a small arts studio in Tehran that produced popular works. Sirak introduces a new world by excluding the real world. Although he belongs to the contemporary world, he has killed any reference to the life and art of this world. The revolution brought by him deals with what the material of art does to the art itself, without necessitating a memory of the non-art-non-line background. He gained national recognition in 1957, winning a prize at the Contemporary Iranian Artist Exhibition of the Iran- America Society. This was followed by the Imperial Court Prize at the Tehran Biennale in 1958 and first prize at the Paris Biennale in 1959. The artist has exhibited at the Grand Palais and the Salon De Mont Rouge in Paris, as well as at Washington International. He has had more than 140 solo exhibitions in various countries such as: Iran, France, Greece, United States of America and Canada, and more than 40 group exhibitions in Iran, Italy, France, USA, Pakistan, Germany, Switzerland, Canada and Armenia. He currently lives and teaches painting in Toronto, Canada. ab-anbar.com Image courtesy of the artist and Ab-anbar Gallery