Did you know that not every Martiros Manoukian artwork belongs to the same category?
For collectors discovering the work of Martiros Manoukian, understanding this distinction is essential.
Over the course of his career, Martiros has created works across several categories, ranging from unique, one-of-one compositions to original series, variations, hand-retouched serigraphs and serigraph editions. While each represents a part of the artist’s creative history, they should not be confused with one another.
At the highest level are Martiros Manoukian’s Unique Originals.
The Unique Original: One Work, One Vision
A Unique Original is exactly what its name suggests: a singular creation.
These works are conceived and created individually from the beginning. They are not produced as editions, nor are they based upon an image intended to be recreated repeatedly. The composition exists as one original work, making its place within the artist’s body of work fundamentally different from an edition or recurring series.
Martiros is particularly known for his experimentation with mixed media, texture, brilliant color and layered surfaces. In his most ambitious original works, the physical presence of the artwork becomes part of the experience. Details, dimensionality and changes in light can be difficult to communicate through photography alone.
This is particularly evident in the Constellation Collection, a collection of extraordinary original works presented by Haykoff Gallery. These paintings were created to be experienced in person, where their layers, light, texture and intricate details can be fully appreciated.
The Unique Originals represented by Haykoff Gallery are not offered as ordinary online inventory. They are privately presented to collectors through Haykoff Gallery, which exclusively represents this collection and holds the copyrights associated with its Unique Originals.
Their valuation therefore should not be compared directly with the prices of Martiros works commonly encountered online.
Original Series: A Story Told Across Multiple Works
The next distinction is the Original Series.
These are original works of art, individually created by the artist, but they belong to a larger artistic concept. Certain subjects, symbols, figures or visual ideas may return from one work to another.
This repetition is intentional.
Rather than a single composition existing entirely on its own, the works collectively explore an idea or tell a broader visual story. Each painting remains an original creation, while sharing a recognizable artistic language with other works within the series.
Original Variations
Martiros has also created Original Variations.
Here, an established subject or composition may be interpreted again through changes in color, detail, medium, texture or other artistic elements. These works demonstrate how an artist can revisit an image while creating a distinct physical artwork.
Understanding this category is particularly important in the secondary market because two works may appear related without actually being the same object or belonging to the same level of rarity.
What Is a Serigraph?
Another important category in Martiros Manoukian’s career is the serigraph.
A serigraph is a fine-art print produced through a screen-printing process. Different colors are transferred through separate screens, allowing an image to be constructed through multiple layers of ink.
Unlike a one-of-one painting created directly on a single surface, a serigraph can be produced as an edition. An edition might contain dozens or hundreds of impressions of the same underlying image, frequently numbered and signed by the artist.
Martiros also produced artist-retouched serigraphs, in which additional work by the artist is applied to a serigraph after printing. This introduces a hand-worked element, but it still remains categorically different from a Unique Original conceived and executed as a singular artwork.
And Then There Are Prints
The broader art market also contains reproductions and prints of established imagery.
These can provide an accessible way for admirers to own and enjoy an artist’s imagery, but they occupy an entirely different collecting category from a singular original painting.
This distinction helps explain something collectors occasionally encounter with Martiros Manoukian: dramatically different prices bearing the same artist’s name.
A collector may find a Martiros work online for several thousand dollars and then encounter an important original represented at a dramatically higher valuation. The artist’s name may be the same, but the category, rarity, provenance, medium and significance of the artwork may be entirely different.
Comparing them solely by price is therefore misleading.
It is much like comparing an edition to a singular masterwork. Both may carry the visual language of the artist, but they do not represent the same object, scarcity or position within the artist’s body of work.
The Importance of Knowing What You Are Collecting
For serious collectors, the question should never simply be:
“Is this a Martiros?”
The more important questions are:
What category of Martiros is it? Is it one of one? Is it part of a series? Is it a variation? Is it an artist-retouched serigraph? Is it an edition? What is its provenance?
Those distinctions can completely change the significance of an artwork.
Martiros Manoukian has spent decades developing a visual world of extraordinary color, movement, romance and fantasy. His career has produced an extensive and diverse body of work, but within that body of work exists a much smaller universe of singular creations.
Haykoff Gallery specializes in that universe.
The gallery exclusively represents its collection of Martiros Manoukian Unique Originals and presents these works privately rather than treating them as conventional online inventory. For collectors seeking the rarest level of Martiros’ work, understanding the difference is where collecting truly begins.
Haykoff Gallery
Exclusive representation of the Martiros Manoukian Unique Original Collection
