(b Djadjur, Akhuryan district, 20 July 1928; d Erevan, 24 Feb 1975). Armenian painter and stage designer. He studied at the Institute of Theatre and Art in Erevan (1952–4), as well as at the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) from 1954 to 1960. He benefited from the advice of the Armenian painter, Martiros Saryan, but developed a style of his own, with an intense use of colour similar to that of Fauvism. The influence of Armenian medieval art is strongly apparent in his landscapes, self-portraits and scenes of peasant life, for example Baking Lavash (1972; Erevan, Pict. Gal. Armenia). His work combines an uncommon and expressive richness of colour with a dramatic monumentality of composition. He had a one-man show in Erevan in 1962 and another in Moscow in 1969. In 1972 his studio was burnt down and a large number of his canvases destroyed. He was also a stage designer, producing designs, for example, for sets for Aram Khachaturian’s ballet Gayane at the A. Spendiarov Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Erevan (1974; Erevan, Pict. Gal. Armenia), and a monumental painter (e.g. the painting for the vestibule of the Erevan Mechanical Engineering Technical School, 1974). A museum devoted to Avetisyan was established in Djadjur, after his death in a car accident.