The gravest thing that could happen to our culture today—to our music, our literature, our painting—has happened. These are not words of incantation spoken before the apparition of a great painter who died tragically young. While he was alive, we felt rich; in his light, many appeared beautiful. His death robbed our art. We, his bewildered friends, were robbed too: even his mere presence, even when he was doing nothing, gave us confidence in talent and faith. He created, and he inspired others to create. He was unique: he had the ability, and he had the love. Neither ability without love nor love without ability amounts to much; in him, great artistry and deep love were fused together. A single one of his paintings could establish someone as a great painter; his paintings could establish as many great painters as there were canvases. Yet neither the most perfect of them nor all of them together convey the complete perfection concentrated in Minas himself. He was inexhaustible. Through his demanding regard for his work and for his own integrity, he had forged himself into someone whose imperfect creations, too, had value, whose very act of creation had value. Yes, he was already inexhaustible. All he needed was time, a long span of time, to turn the heavy drop of divine talent poured into his body into work, with sustained, unbroken effort, with the tireless diligence of an Armenian peasant. He was born fifty years after Saryan; he was meant to die fifty years after Saryan. He was born heir to the throne; he was to take his seat on the vacant throne of the Great One. Already today he was worthy of that vacant throne of the Master and the Great One. But how beautiful it is when indisputable achievement is crowned with a venerable old age as well. He was to live Saryan’s life and glory, and in 2020 his light body, fragile as a cocoon, that memory of an old body filled with life—the body of a man who had given his heart and love to his homeland—would have been committed to his native earth with a beautiful sadness…