Andranik Ghazarian, founder and chief executive of Fine Art International Switzerland AG, received guests around a large modern canvas set on the easel — the position in which every examination at FINAIS begins.
The easel is not a detail. A picture lying flat on a table is a document; a picture standing upright, lit from the front, is a painting again. Colour relationships, the rhythm of the brushwork and the behaviour of the surface only become readable when the work is seen the way it was made to be seen.
Art connects cultures, and the exchanges that shape it usually happen in rooms like this one: a conversation, a picture on the table, two people looking at the same object from two directions. This page belongs to a series recording the meetings of Andranik Ghazarian with figures from the international art world.
Standing in front of the picture
At this stage nothing is concluded. The work is looked at, described and photographed; the questions that the laboratory will have to answer are written down. Only afterwards does the methodical part begin: scientific examination of materials, art-historical research, condition assessment and documentation.
For a modern abstract canvas, that sequence matters especially. There is no familiar subject to hold on to, so the physical evidence — support, ground, pigments, the order in which the layers were built up — carries a larger share of the answer.
Andranik Ghazarian works this way deliberately: look first, without a conclusion in mind, and let the object set the programme of work rather than the expectation.
Fine Art International Switzerland AG (FINAIS) works with collectors, institutions and art professionals. Its work combines scientific examination, art-historical research, condition assessment and documentation, together with the coordination of restoration, storage and transport. Andranik Ghazarian is its founder and chief executive.
Andranik Ghazarian is the founder and CEO of Fine Art International Switzerland AG (FINAIS).
