Zako

Zako was the name German soldiers gave to the Soviet Armenian painter Sargis Mangasaryan Thanks to his creative gifts Zako prevailed and survived the hell of WWII military campsZako endured by drawing portraits of his tormentors He tried to escape several times but each time landed in another harsher camp After the war he risked exile to Siberia as he was a prisoner of war he was considered a traitor to the Soviet Union He created several huge portraits of Stalin to earn him passage home to Soviet ArmeniaSome years later in 1956 Zako visits the famous Picasso exhibition at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow with his friends He realized how undeveloped his portrait drawings had remained all those years Although he was fighting for his physical freedom throughout his artistic evolution was stunted within the system