A Life Shaped by Displacement The early years of Simon Samsonyan were defined by the sudden, violent shifts of history. Born in 1912, he was a child of the Armenian Genocide, orphaned as a toddler and forced into a life of movement. He survived the fires of Smyrna and the fall of Constantinople, moving through the chaos of the early twentieth century before finding a sense of place in Egypt. This early experience of loss and survival left a mark on his perspective, a quiet weight that would eventually settle into the lines and shapes of his canvases. He lived through the upheaval of wars and…