Sonia Avakian

In 1906, Sonia Avakian was born Sophia Lifshitz in Moscow, Russia. She studied with Kandinsky at the Moscow Fine Arts Academy and the Vienna Art School Museum in Austria. She moved to Tabriz, Iran after marrying a Persian-Armenian man and in 1945, after her husband's death, she moved to New York City. In New York, she studied at the Traphagen School of Fashion, the City College of New York, the Brooklyn Museum School of Art and the Art Students League.

She exhibited and was a member of the Women's International Exposition in New York, the Bergen County (New Jersey) Artists Guild, the Portrait Society of New Jersey, the Bogota Art Association, the Ridgefield Park Art Association and SALUTE to Women in Arts. Avakian liked to paint original designs on fabric. In 1984, she died at the age of 78 in Oakland, NJ.