Arman Manookian survived one of Europe’s greatest tragedies, and
became one of Hawai‘i’s finest painters. What he couldn’t escape
was himself. When the Hotel Hana-Maui was sold to Denver-based
Amstar Group LLC earlier this year, a collection of paintings
that had long been on display at the hotel was removed and
offered for sale. The paintings are among the best-known works
by Arman Tateos Manookian, a fiery artist once legendary in
Hawai‘i. A radical innovator in his use of color, Manookian was
a tormented soul touched by genius. Born in Istanbul in 1904, he
was the eldest son of the publisher of one of the city’s more
than fifty Armenian newspapers. The fading splendor of Istanbul
colored Arman’s childhood imagination. He once told an
interviewer that he was from “Byzantium . . . the eastern
capital of the Roman Empire.” On April 24, 1915, that idyllic
childhood was shattered when Turkish authorities targeted
Arman’s father for arrest, along with several hundred other
Armenian leaders and intellectuals. Ars