Hope and Gratitude Silent Auction

St. Nersess Armenian Seminary
START
23
April 2019
03:00 PM EDT
END
18
May 2019
08:00 PM EDT
RAISED
$6,008.00
GOAL $20,000.00
30.0% To Goal

About Our Auction

The William Saroyan Foundation gifted to St. Nersess Seminary an original painting by William Saroyan that is signed and was written in his own hand on April 28, 1963. It measures 36.5" x 31.5".

We are offering this painting through an online silent auction. Final bids must be made by 8pm EST on May 18 during the Hope and Gratitude celebratory banquet.

The winner may write a check to St. Nersess Armenian Seminary. All proceeds will benefit the seminary!

“Long before Jackson Pollock, for instance, had begun his magnificent experiments and made his magnificent achievements in painting, I had already been there, I had already made the experiments and had beheld the achievements. I hadn’t made anything of them because writing was my life, and, if I may say so, my business. The drawings and paintings were part of my writing, partly of my finding out about writing, and about how I would live my life and write my writing.” -William Saroyan

William Saroyan was also an exceptional visual artist, who produced a sizable archive of drawings and watercolor paintings. His abstract work was influenced by Chinese brush drawing, Abstract Expressionism as embodied by Jackson Pollock, and the calligraphic work of Mark Tobey. He created hundreds of pieces of art over fifty years. Today his artwork is owned by dozens of museums in the US, and by private collectors around the world.

“Saroyan painted as he wrote: rapidly, profusely, and regularly, often in spurts,” said Dickran Kouymjian, friend and confidant to Saroyan. “Excessive analysis is not necessary. It is through the free association of color and form that Saroyan’s paintings are to be enjoyed.” - Dickran Kouymjian, the Haig and Isabel Berberian Professor of Armenian Studies, emeritus, at California State University. He was a friend and confidant to Saroyan during his final years. He instituted courses at Fresno State on the author’s life and works. In 1996, he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to inventory Saroyan’s manuscripts, papers, correspondence and effects. He was subsequently appointed the second William Saroyan Visiting Professor of Armenian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.


About St. Nersess Armenian Seminary

St. Nersess Seminary prepares leaders for service in the Armenian Church. As the only Armenian seminary in the western world, St. Nersess remains committed to preparing priests and non-ordained leaders for ministry in the Armenian Church in North America and beyond.

Learn More