Vahe Kirishjian

Vahe Levon Kirishjian was born in 1913 in Cairo, Egypt. His parents were Armenian refugees, who immigrated to New York City in 1922, when he was nine years old. His father, Avedis Kirchdijian, changed the family’s name to Kirishjian and was himself an artist, who specialized in photoengraving. Vahe graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1932 and then attended The Cooper Union Art School at night, while working for the Advertising Department of the Daily News. For four years, he studied mural painting, fine arts, life painting, and commercial design. Shortly after his graduation from Cooper Union, he was awarded a prestigious mural commission in Washington, D.C., for the Post Office Department building, which is now the William Jefferson Clinton Federal building. In 1940, at the age of 27, he completed the eight-panel mural series, titled The Four Seasons and Signs of the Zodiac, on the ceiling of the building’s library.

Kirishjian drew maps for the Army Map Service during World War II and, by the 1950s, he was hired as a television art director in the Graphics Arts Department at the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), where he worked for 30 years. He designed graphics, illustrations, charts, maps, and promotional materials for CBS-TV, working on such programs as The Honeymooners, The Ed Sullivan Show, Captain Kangaroo, and Playhouse 90. As a freelance cartographic artist, he also drew maps for Fortune Magazine, Reader’s Digest, and several airlines, such as American Airlines, TWA, and Northwest Orient Airlines. In 1973, Kirishjian completed two large paintings depicting Saints Sahag and Mesrob, the founders of the Armenian alphabet, for Saint Vartan Armenian Cathedral in New York City.