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“Night”, a fresco by renowned Armenian artist of the 20th century Minas Avetisyan kept in a half-dilapidated factory in the second largest city of Gyumri, is on the brink of destruction.

Speaking to Panorana.am, the painter’s son, Arman Avetisyan stressed the need to restore the painting before moving it to a different place. He says the art work which is estimated at around $20-25 thousand is listed among the state protected cultural monuments, and the Ministry of Culture has long been informed on the issue.

Asked whether there is a possibility of restoring the fresco, he says they have received no reactions yet, but hope to receive some support both from Armenia and the Diaspora.

According to Avetisyan, frescoes are usually restored and relocated in hot weather, but fixing works on the fresco can start from tomorrow on.

He informed that a total of 8 paintings by the artist have been restored so far due to the efforts of the Minas Avetisyan Foundation, with only one of them left in its venue.

Avetisyan says another fresco of his father in the village of Azatan also needs a partial restoration but not a relocation.

“Armenia” fresco, which was restored 4 years ago, has already suffered some damages, he added.

“The local community fails to realize well what it has. Kids are constantly playing, there was also an issue of a faulty pipe which got the wall damp. I have reported about it but hardly see any reactions,” he said.

Born in 1928 in Armenia’s Jajur village, Minas Avetisyan was a painter and set designer. From 1952 to 1954, he studied at the Institute of Theater and Art in Yerevan, and from 1954 to 1960, at the Ilya Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).

He benefited from the advice of famous Armenian painter Martiros Saryan, but developed a style of his own, with an intense use of color similar to that of Fauvism. The influence of Armenian medieval art is strongly apparent in his landscapes, self-portraits and scenes of peasant life. His work combines an uncommon and expressive richness of color with a dramatic monumentality of composition. In 1962, he had a one-man show in Yerevan, and another in Moscow in 1969. In 1972, a fire in his studio destroyed a large portion of his work.

In 1974, the artist designed the sets for Aram Khachaturian’s ballet Gayane at the A. Spendiarov Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet in Yerevan. Following his death in a car accident in 1975, a museum devoted to Avetisyan opened in his native village.