After that, he went to St. Petersburg, where he worked in the studios of Lev Dimitriev-Kavkazsky [ru] and took art lessons, with financial support from Mkrtich Khrimian.

Shortly after, he managed to elude his guardians and made his way to Paris; continuing his studies at the Académie Julian with Jean-Paul Laurens and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant.

That year, he went to Istanbul, where he became acquainted with Komitas, Daniel Varoujan, Siamanto, Yervant Odian and many other Armenian cultural figures.

He then went to the United States; painting portraits in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and, especially, Fresno, a city with a large number of Armenian emigrants, where he held major solo exhibitions in 1925 and 1926.

At the invitation of the Transcaucasian SFSR, he returned home in 1928 and settled in Yerevan;[1] presenting a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Armenia in 1929.The following year, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.