Armen Der Kiureghian, professor of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, has published a book about the life and work of his father, Sumbat Der Kiureghian, renowned Iranian-Armenian watercolorist. The Life and Art of Sumbat includes 120 pages of color reproductions of Sumbat’s paintings, drawings, and sketches, as well as Sumbat’s biography, written by his son and full of personal anecdotes and letters. Der Kiureghian compiled the material over a period of 9 years, drawing on archival resources in Iran, Armenia and the United States, as well as interviews with Sumbat’s friends and relatives across the globe. He describes his father’s life through a series of intimate stories and quotations from other writers. Sumbat (1913-1999) was a highly regarded Iranian-Armenian artist, who is particularly admired for his watercolor and gouache renditions of Iranian and Armenian village scenes and of landscapes. A descendant of 17 th century Armenian settlers in the New Julfa district of Isfahan, he embodied the artistic traditions of his people and of his hometown. Of particular note are his “Sumbatisms,” eponymous innovations Sumbat created by turning his newspaper-palettes into abstract depictions of busy street scenes. The Life and Art of Sumbat, 176 pages in hardcover, is available at Sumbat.com , Amazon.com and selected bookstores in Los Angeles, Berkeley, New York and Boston. 
