Avetik Isahakyan with his grandfather Gabriel Glchyan

Avetik Isahakyan as a child with his grandfather Gabriel Glchyan. The boy wears dark clothes and a decorated belt; the grandfather wears a tall fur hat, a long dark coat and a wide belt, with a watch chain on his chest.

Isahakyan was born on 18 (30) October 1875 in Alexandropol (Gyumri), in the Erivan Governorate. In 1889–1892 he studied at the Gevorgian Seminary in Etchmiadzin (Vagharshapat), in 1892 he published his first poem, and in 1892–1895 he studied philosophy and anthropology at Leipzig University. In 1895 he joined the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and he was arrested in 1896 and in 1908. In 1911 he was expelled from the Russian Empire for revolutionary activity and settled in Germany, where in 1914 he founded the German-Armenian Society together with Johannes Lepsius and Paul Rohrbach.

Until 1936 he lived mostly abroad, then returned to the USSR. In 1943 he was elected an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR, and in 1946 chairman of the Writers' Union of the Armenian SSR. He died on 17 October 1957 and is buried in the Komitas Pantheon in Yerevan.