"I am writing this on behalf of Varteni Mosdichian, the painter whose works were the initial sparkle and inspiration for my one hour long piece "Picture for An Exhibition" for chamber orchestra, premiered in Boston in 2000. I am the composer of more than 30 works for symphony orchestra, performed by many symphony orchestra throughout the world, as well as the author of many chamber and choral pieces, and the winner of many international awards (the last one is a huge New England Grant for my last piece "Electric Symphony" scheduled to be premiered in Boston in October in 2008) Also, during last forty years, I composed music for eighteen movies. I was professor of composition at Belgrade Conservatory of Music, currently -- I am professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. I was also visiting professor at different conservatories and music schools in Europe, United States, and Canada.
When, approximately ten years ago -- I had an opportunity to see Varteni's paintings for the first time (in her studio in Boston) -- I was struck by the power, beauty and explosive imagination radiating from the canvases of this wonderful painter. Her intelligent links with the past and the tradition (generally speaking with the "abstract" experience of the first part of 20th century) -- are so naturally blended with a new shades of figural on her own, sometimes it looks to me that it emerges from depths of some disfigured and distorted but eternal memory, always the same and always old but always new, so far from the current fashions which are already too close to their near oblivion. In the decade when visual arts are more or less nothing else but "the conceptual" -- we have "a hero" and a painter who chose to paint!! And she does it great! That's the reason why I am writing this letter, and it was the reason why I composed eleven tableaux of "Pictures for an Exhibition", alluding to the Mussorgsky’s piece with slightly different title - Pictures at an Exhibition. In this slightly post modernistic game, I don't know how (this dispute) will be solved between Mussorgsky and me, but I am sure that at least my inspiration was the art of much higher level than his. "
Vuk Kulenovic, Composer
Professor of music at the Berklee music college