Siavash "Siah" Armajani (; 10 July 1939 – 27 August 2020) was an Iranian-born American sculptor and architect known for his public art.
Family and education
Siavash Armajani was born into a wealthy, educated family of textile merchants in 1939 in Tehran, Iran. He attended a Presbyterian missionary school. He thought that his grandmother was the influence that started his political activism. There he studied art and philosophy, making Saint Paul, Minnesota, his permanent home.
Early career
The Walker Art Center was the first to acquire Armajani's work, after he entered two works into their biennial in 1962. They purchased Prayer, an intricately lettered canvas covered in Farsi poetry. Armajani expresses three basic types of bridge construction: beam (the walkway), arch (eastern side), and suspension (western side). He commissioned a poem by John Ashbery that is stamped into the bridge's upper beams. And in 1993, he built on one side in Loring Park, the pavilion Gazebo for Four Anarchists: Mary Nardini, Irma Sanchini, William James Sidis, Carlo Valdinoci.
thumb|upright|alt=Complex structure of crosspieces apparently about three or four stories high in silhouette, with bridge like appendage bearing Olympic rings at second floor|The 1996 Olympic cauldron in [[Atlanta, which Armajani later disowned
This was the first time the Olympic Torch was created by an artist; all previous designs had been created by engineers or architects.
He worked on other projects such as the Round Gazebo in Nice, France, the Sacco and Vanzetti Reading Room at the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, and projects in Münster, Germany; Battery Park City, New York; at Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York;
Later career
In his later years, Armajani returned to his politically active roots. is a modern take on Picasso's Guernica but was censored in the U.S. due to its critical view of the war in Iraq. It was recently on view at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Seven Rooms of Hospitality is based on a conversation between Jacques Derrida and Anne Dufourmantelle.
The Minneapolis Institute of Art holds several works: Skyway No.2 (1980), a mahogany and brass portal; Mississippi Delta (2005-2006), a colored pencil on Mylar triptych picturing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; and An Exile Dreaming of Saint Adorno (2009), a cage-like inhabited tiny house or stage named for Theodor W. Adorno.
Armajani was the subject of more than 50 solo exhibitions, Siah Armajani: Follow This Line, the first comprehensive US retrospective dedicated to the artist, was on view at the Walker Art Center September 9 through December 30, 2018, and at the Met Breuer February 20 through June 2, 2019.
Death
Armajani died of heart failure in Minneapolis on August 27, 2020, at age 81. In 2011, he was awarded Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government and received a distinguished artist award from the McKnight Foundation.