Born in 1970 in Leninnakan (now Gumri) in Armenia, Armen Saakyan was admitted at the age of 11 to the School of Fine Arts in his city. He left her four years later to pursue his art studies at the School of Fine Arts in Ryazan, Russia, from which he graduated in 1990.

During the first half of the 90s, he worked as a “decorator” for various shows at the Riazan Theatre and then later became an interior designer. From 1995 to 2002, he was a graphic designer for an advertising agency. Alongside his professional activity, he continued to paint and exhibited in Ryazan, Voroniège and Moscow.

His favorite themes revolve around urban architecture, landscapes and inhabitants of his native country. He arrived in France in 2002 and married a French woman met a few years earlier in Russia. New themes appear in his painting: new landscapes, scenes of life, portraits, religious compositions and narratives. He exhibited in various salons in France and abroad (Münster, Valletta, Moscow, etc.).

In 2005, he moved to Nantes. He painted movement but also still lifes. He exhibits in the West of France and is awarded many prizes.

Since 2006, he paints new landscapes and nudes from living models. He also creates works where the narrative character is omnipresent. For him, diversity is a choice, that of encounters and artistic freedom. Through all the themes he approaches, Armen Saakyan paints with very diverse styles that range from classicism to abstract, cubism, purism and expressionism. When he paints his nudes, he covers the canvas with a warm color (red, ocher, brown, earth of Siena). The represented nudes do not stand out from the painting, sometimes even the modelled seems to fade until almost vanishing to become one with the canvas.

It is the use of the same chromatic range for the subject and the background that gives this aspect of plastic uniqueness. The presence of some shadows and the addition of red or green colors in some paintings gives a feeling of slight movement, as if some of the represented nudes wanted to tell us a secret. Armen Saakyan works and reworks his paintings in an aesthetic approach, in search of Beauty without idealizing his characters.