Haig Patigian

Newspaper clipping of Haig Patigian standing next to his bust of Helen Wills, October 1928

Haig Patigian was an Armenian-American sculptor born on January 22, 1876 in the city of Van in the Ottoman Empire and died on September 19, 1950 in San Francisco, California. His parents were teachers at the American Mission School in Armenia. He was largely self-taught as a sculptor.

Patigian spent most of his career in San Francisco, California and most of his works are located in California. The Oakland Museum in Oakland, California, includes a large number of his works in its collection, and more can be seen in and around San Francisco City Hall.

Patigian was an active member of the Bohemian Club, serving two terms as club president. He designed the Owl Shrine, a 40-foot high hollow concrete and steel structure which was built in the 1920s to have the appearance of a natural rock outcropping which happened to resemble an owl.[1] The Owl Shrine became the centerpiece of the Cremation of Care ceremony at the Bohemian Grove in 1929.[2]

Patigian married Blanche Hollister of Courtland, California, in 1908.[3]

Selected public works

Entrance of 600 Stockton, San Francisco, the former Metropolitan Life building, now a Ritz-Carlton hotel. Visible behind a decorated Christmas tree are the Ionic columns surmounted by a pediment containing a tableau created in 1920 by Patigian for his client Timothy L. Pflueger of Miller and Pflueger, architects
Vanity, shown in 1916 at the Palace of Fine Arts
This work resided in the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. as one of California's contributions to the National Statuary Hall Collection until being replaced by a statue of Ronald Reagan in 2009.

Architectural sculpture

when the building was demolished in 1968 the figures were moved to the Art Museum of the University of California, Santa Barbara

References

  1. Starr, Kevin (2002). The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-515797-4.
  2. Cross, Francis L. (1972). The Annals of the Bohemian Club for the years 1907-1972, Centennial Edition, volume V. San Francisco: Bohemian Club and Recorder-Sunset Press.
  3. Herringshaw, Thomas William. American Elite and Sociologist Bluebook, p. 387. American Blue Book Publishers, 1922.
  4. Todd, Frank Morton (1921). The Story of the Exposition (Volume Two of Five). New York, London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, The Knickerbocker Press.

External links