Farairan’ Choice Farhad Moshiri

/in

Born 1963, Shiraz, Iran
Graduate of California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California, 1984
Lives and works in Tehran.
Solo exhibitions:
2008 -Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels
2007 -Daneyal Mahmood Gallery, Chelsea NY
CANDY STORE, The Third Line Gallery, Dubai
2006 -Threshold of Hap, e x t r a s p a z io, Rome
Albareh Gallery, Bahrain
Operation Supermarket, with Shirin Aliabadi, The Counter Gallery, London
Operation Supermarket, with Shirin Aliabadi, Kolding Design School, Copenhagen
The Third Line Gallery, Dubai
2004 -e x t r a s p a z i o, Rome
Art Space Gallery, curated by Isabelle Van Den Eynde De Rivieren, Dubai
Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, New York
2003Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, Geneva
Leighton House Museum, curated by Rose Issa, London
2002-13 Vanak Street Gallery, Tehran
2001-Heaven,13 Vanak Street Gallery, Tehran
2000-13 Vanak Street Gallery, Tehran1992Seyhoun Gallery, Tehran
Group Shows:
2007-Art without borders, Tehran Gallery, University of Tehran.
Neighbours in Dialogue, Feshane cultural center, Istanbul, curated by Beral Madra
2006-Iran.com, Museum of New Art, Freiburg
Images of the Middle East, Copenhagen
Art without Borders, Armenian Centre for Contemporary Experimental Art, Yerevan
V-Day, Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, New York
Word into Art. Artists of the Modern Middle East, curated by Venetia Porter, British Museum, London
Ethnic Marketing, 13 Vanak Street Gallery, Tehran
2005-After the Revolution, curated by Octavio Zaya, KM Kulturunea Erakustaretoa, San Sebastian. Quasi niente / almost nothing, e x t r a s p a z i o, Rome Welcome, curated by Farhad Moshiri, Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, New York
2004-2005-It’s Hard to Touch the Real, Kunstverein, Munich – Tallinn Kunsthalle, Tallinn – Unge Kunstnerers Samfund UKS (The Association of Young Artists), Oslo – Yeans (artist-run-space), Gothenburg – Bildmuseet Umeå, University College of Fine Arts, Umeå, Sweden
2004-Entfernte Nähe, curated by Rose Issa, House of World Cultures, Berlin Iran under the Skin, curated by Firouz Firouz, CCCB, Barcelona Ethnic Marketing, curated by Martine Anderfuhren e Tirdad Zolghadr, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva Turning Points, curated by Media Farzin, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, Columbia University, New York
2003-Iranian Pool, curated by Maria Chus Martinez, Casa Asia/ARCO, Madrid
Casa Asia, curated by Maria Chus Martinez, Barcelona
Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, UAE
Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art, Malmo, Sweden
Continuous Stroke of a Breath, curated by Afsaneh Firouz, Harvard University, Boston
Haft, curated by Michket Krifa, l’Espace Landowski, Ville de Boulogne- Billancourt, France
1993-Tehran Biennial, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran
1989-Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, Los Angeles
Literature:
2005 Gulf Air Magazine, May 2005
2005 Art AsiaPacific, Spring 2005
2005 Bidoun Magazine, Spring 2005
2005 New York Times, April 8
2005, review by Holland Cotter
2005 Canvas, March/ April 2005
2005 New York Sun, March 25, 2005
2005 Trace, March 2005
2005 Bidoun Magazine, Winter 2005
2004 Berliner Morgenpost, March 20, 2004, Berlin
2004 Der Tagesspiegel, March 19, 2004, Berlin

Farhad Moshiri
Translator:Roya Monajem
It is years now that Farhad Moshiri, the Iranian painter and installation artist is a known figure on an international scale. General reception of art critics as well as, his successive achievements in international art auctions outside Iran are the main factors which helped him reach such an exceptional fame and esteem. In 2008 his piece “Love” made a record in the price of art works sold in a major art auction, which is something unique and exemplary for a young Iranian artist even though in his home country, his presence has not been felt as much. Yet, success in selling is not the only factor which has turned Moshiri into an exceptional artist; accomplishing a personal language and style at early stage of his artistic career is a prior factor in making his works distinct and special.

Farhad Moshiri was born in 1963 in Shiraz, the city of Hafez, Sadi, Pasargad and Persepolis. His father owned a few cinemas in Shiraz, which roused Farhad’s interest in cinema and art from an early age. Even though he was not a successful student at school, he showed a great love for drawing and painting, which was recognized and encouraged by his art loving father. In fact, it was this passion for drawing which made him go to America after the Revolution (1979) and settle down in a small town near Los Angeles where he finished his preliminary education. He then enrolled in Art Institute of California in 1981, when artists like John Baldassari and Michael Asher taught there. Thus his academic studies coincided with one of the brilliant periods of CalArt. His first exhibition in Los Angeles (1987) was a group video installation called The End followed by another installation at Black Salad Gallery in 1988. Even though at the beginning of his artistic career, he was utilizing images, film and video art, after his third exhibition at Dorothy Goldin Gallery; he turned his attention to painting and mixed media.

After his return to Iran in 1989, he began working for UNICE producing computer animations and books for children for four years. He then totally devoted his time to painting. Inspired by clay vases and jars he had seen in Shiraz, he produced a series of paintings in 1999, later coming to be known as Jar Paintings. They were minimalist paintings of clay jars on large canvases, with single color backgrounds. He displayed words or simple phrases such as “love”, “past is past” or “only me” in Iranian calligraphy in ink or paint on these jars. They immediately attracted the attention of art virtuosi and critics and soon decorated the walls of art collectors.

Sohrab Mohebbi, art critic, author and artwork specialist regards these works as “subtle hints to Saqqakhaneh School of the 1960s and 1970s.” According to him “Moshiri’s tongue in cheek evocation of Iranian modernism, while giving visual references to calligraphy and khat-naghashi (calligraphy-painting), were playful comments on the relationships between the visual, textual and the oratory.” But Moshiri’s minimalism, this subtle, translucent and alluding approach to an Iranian modern school of painting was in open contrast to this school’s style of exaggeration and detail – and the minimal application of image, colour, calligraphy and embellished compositions can be regarded as a post-modern approach to a period of Iranian painting which at the threshold of 1960 tried to create a kind of pop art. However, according to Mohebbi, these works “had the sound of streets and honk of khavar trucks, the appearance of a misplaced Saqakhaneh idea and touched upon the line between poetry and moetry (sher o ver = rhythmic nonsense). In a way, it could be said that these works were also about the notion of making work about painting/calligraphy or Saqakhaneh school- a predominant brand of Iranian art making. In his works, Moshiri succeeded in creating a situation where the very notion of art historical reflections (for instance in the case of jar paintings) itself is embedded in the work and the viewer is at once encountering the work and a posture of criticality. It is this notion of criticality as a posture or a position among others, such as locality, irony or contradiction that separates Moshiri’s work from most of his contemporaries whose brand of critique dominates the work and the work does not go beyond plastic manifestations of the status quo.”

Moshiri exhibited his vase paintings at Fereydoun Ave’s Gallery for the first time in 2001 which was followed by period of his painting exhibitions and installations. His sofreh-s (table-cloths) installation with illustrated plates was an attempt to reach a kind of Iranian Pop Art. In these collections, he used recent Iranian popular icons, photos of artists and famous figures to decorate his plates and dishes in a kitsch-like representation, set on long Iranian sofreh-s laid on grass field or under the canopies of trees. In a period when according to Mohebbi, “some of the artists in the country were preoccupied with cheap exotica and obsolete identity politics with rather conservative use of medium, Moshiri’s palette went beyond paint tubes.”

In 2004, Farhad Moshiri experienced a new approach to kitsch. He exhibited his first embroideries (reminiscent of traditional embroideries by Iranian women) in Italy. These works also show the same dominant features of his previous works: a decorative approach, yet a simple minimalist application of popular icons and images mixed with a personal mannerism with images which as described by Negar Azimi in an article (Bidoun, No. 20, spring 2010) “have emerged as though out of the heart of cartoons, fables or fairy tales” and had the same function as universal icons, adopted from both cultures, Eastern (his birth place) and Western (where he studied). An attempt to present the anomalies resulting from the clash of two cultures, if not reconciling them in a new form of Iranian Pop Art. In another period of his artistic activity, Moshiri worked with toy fighters and bombers reminding Lichtenstein’s famous work, Whaam or the original inspiration sources, that is Marvel comic strips.

Another example of utilization of universal icons is his Flying Carpet (2007); 32 stacked machine made carpets 275 x 180 x 44cm. and 300 x200 x 44cm, each apparently mechanically mutilated and shaped into a generic fighter jet sending a barrage of contrasting signals. The juxtaposition of domestic soft furnishings with an image of military hardware is suggestive either of foreign interference bringing hardship into the home or else is emblematic of the determination and defiance of the Iranian state in the face of aggressors. In the face of stiff competition from princes, princesses, thieves and genies, the image of the flying carpet is still the most enduring of all of those to emerge from the Tales of the Thousand and One Nights.

Moshiri says about this work:

“I have a fascination with icons and cliches, exemplified herein the Persian carpets, probably our country’s biggest export after oil. They are imbued with a sense of familiarity and open to all sorts of possibilities”

In a text posted at Christie’s site it is said:

Farhad Moshiri’s Flying Carpet is at once provocative, humorous and ambiguous in message. Its monumental size and its fusion of the lyrical with the sardonic make this one of his most impressive works. Persian carpets with their immense cultural and economic importance are iconic and emblematic of Iran and a strong part of the Persian identity. Moshiri uses the motif of the carpet as visual shorthand for Iran and Persian culture in a way strongly reminiscent of Jasper Johns’ use of the Stars and Stripes as representative of America. The Persian carpet carries with it the connotations of the unique and the handmade. By stacking thirty-two carpets of the same size-each of them factory produced- and cutting identical holes into each of, them the shape of which represents a hi-tech product of symbol of modern warfare, Moshiri subverts the expectations of the carpet as an individually crafted rather than a mass-produced artifact. The repetition and stacking of this visible symbol recalls Andy Warhol’s well-known depictions of Campbell’s Soup Cansor Brillo Boxes, whilst in its precision and fetishistic celebration of the material it recalls Minimalist art, notably that of Donald Judd.

Later in 2008 he exhibited embroideries which were composed of Swarovsky’s crystals In one of these works called “Love” (see above) Moshiri is apparently referring to both meanings of this word, that is, its mystical religious Iranian meaning, and its Christian sense of brotherhood, compassion and the relationship between human beings and god. At the same time his installations of gilded armchairs with boomboxes led to the development of a new approach to the mixing of cultures with an affinity to kitsch in both.

According to Sohrab Mohebbi, the notion of juxtaposition is central in many of Moshiri’s works; “Displacement, as opposed to contradiction, which has become a source of one-liner art productions of many artists who have become mere illustrators of ready-made juxtapositions of Iranian contemporary life. This displacement could be within the institution of painting itself, such as the pottery pieces, where the artist looks at Saqakhaneh for instance, or it could be a gold covered mobl-e estil (stylish furniture) and boombox installation at a white cube space- works such as Cradle of Happiness. Moshiri’s art both uses ethnic marketing strategies and their critique and a touch of ironic self-reflexivity is his icing on the cake. By incorporating the distance in the work itself, which at points might approximate cynicism, Moshiri gives concept a sculptural presence. He would make planes out of carpets, outlines corpses with cakes and writes poetry with detergents.”

Moshiri is at the starting point of a new path. He is now an internationally known artist with a background in the rich culture of the east, who is also familiar with the latest development of western art and culture. Moshiri is in search of his unique personal language to interpret the contemporary world, using familiar artistic methods and techniques; he is ready to take the leap into new horizons.

 

Farairan’ Choice Parvaneh Etemadi

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Born in 1948 ̗ Tehran ̗ Iran

Educated from College of Fine Art ̗ Tehran University

She has had some solo and group exhibitions in Iran and abroad such as:

Wade Gallery ̗ Los Angeles ̗ CA

Wade Gallery ̗ Vancouver ̗ British Columbia ̗ Canada

Majless Gallery ̗ Dubai

First exhibition of International Art ̗ Tehran

Fifty Years of Iranian Art ̗ Iran – America Society

The International Art Fair 7’76 ̗ Basle ̗ Switzerland

Specimens of Iranian Art ̗ Peking – Shanghai (Peaple’s Republic of China)

Cite Des Arts ̗ Paris 1978

Contemporary Iranian Art: Four Women ̗ Foxley / Leach Gallery ̗ Washington ̗ D.C

Gallery Espace (Collaboration with Manjit Bawa) ̗ New Delhi ̗ India

Expo 2000 – Basic Needs Pavilion- Hanover – Germany – Installation

Once upon a Time (1) – Golestan Gallery – Tehran – Iran – 2004

Once upon a Time (2) – Mah Art Gallery – Tehran – Iran – 2009

Parvaneh Etemadi
Creation of Beauty as an innovation in Art
Translator : Roya Monajem

Born in 1948, with nearly five decades of lively presence on the scene of visual arts, Parvaneh Etemadi is one of the most successful and popular Iranian artists both in the eyes of art virtuosos and laymen. Her relaxed recusant work style, whether in the early periods of her artistic activity – that is in her still lives, termeh-s (roughly meaning cashmeres) and pomegranates – or in her later periods – that is in her collages and installations –put her amongst the prominent figures in Iranian art. It is in the light of her working style and methodology, her attentive interest in creation of beauty – while heeding both exotic and mundane zeal and taste – her passion for figurative art, her sundry coloring and creation of beauty by virtue of heeding intelligent and pleasing proportions and rhythms that turns every exhibition she holds into an event in the field of contemporary Iranian visual art.

Even though she was born in Tehran, she spent her early childhood in the city of Birjand (in south of Khorasan close to the vast barren eastern Iranian plateau). After finishing both her primary and secondary education in Tehran she began to study at the Fine Art College of Tehran University (1967). This coincided with the foundation of Ta’la’r-e Iran (Hall of Iran, later changed to Talar Ghandriz) by a group of visual arts activists; a significant event attracting many young artists including Parvaneh who not only participated in more than 10 group exhibitions displayed there from 1967 to 1977, but also held her first solo exhibition at the same hall (Ghandriz) in 1969.

During the first period of her artistic activity, probably due to her collaboration and mental sympathy with the same group of artists who founded Ta’la’r-e Iran and under the influence of her academic teachings, she appeared as an abstract painter. Her abstract works were free compositions of forms appearing in pleasing proportions with extensive touches of cold opaque colors, nevertheless designed and worked out candidly and resolutely. The teachings of her first serious painting teacher Bahman Mohases, already known as an innovative painter of the sixties also had a great influence on her in this early period of her artistic activity. Although Mohases introduced her to ancient art, including Etruscan civilization and ancient Greek and attracted her attention to the essence of art, i.e. to something much more deeper in art, but Parvaneh’s adherence to the young group of progressive innovative painters of Ghandriz gallery who believed that the real vocation of art lies in abstraction and thus evaded figure, figurative art and narrative painting drove Parvaneh for a little while away from figurative art and toward abstraction. However, she finally chose a middle way and expanded the scope of her plastic experience which marked the second period of her artistic activity.

This second period of her artistic activity which took shape in seventies was a synthesis of constructivism of her first period with a return to figurative art. The works of this period with their rough sketchy textures of oil color on a cement infrastructure and their modern minimal structure, together with the least application of line and color as well as design and figure emerged as plain agreeable charming still lives. The white rough color of the background (made of cement or a cement texture) and the coloring of figures (mostly foliage and flora and every now and then faces) often in two or three limited opaque colors conveyed a pure simple visual beauty. In fact the stylization of her abstract period with the concision she discovered after being initiated into the simplicity of the Japanese art and the richness of Chinese painting now appeared as an artistic synthesis of figurative painting. It was when she discarded the personal expression of a challenging mentality in favour of a more general expression of beauty. Her paintings of vases, foliages and narcissuses in tin boxes and the direct exquisiteness of her works made her popular among both virtuosos and laymen.

In the third period of her works (from 1980 onwards) – when she discovered color pencils – was in her words: A return to the imaginary basement of her grandmother with trunks of old forgotten outfits and textiles. During this period, by virtue of her perfect brilliant technique, a colorful pallet of warm shinny harmonious and balanced colors, she reproduced fine garments and textiles of silk and termeh designed with familiar flowers, fruit and home utensils in very gorgeous still lives. A synthesis of silhouettes, technical mastery in the use of color pencils, fine pretty textures, and then in a later period, sketching and designing old memorable termehs together with her encounter with the Indian art and an Indian artist turned this period extending to mid 90s into a brilliant period of her artistic activity. It was a period full of beautiful creations, while simultaneously observing both exotic and mundane taste and zeal, as well as proportions and harmony in design and coloring. In fact, it was in this period when she reached a kind of modern plastic art without neglecting fundamental rules of figurative and decorative art.

In her collages which mark the fourth period of her work, Etemadi began a new venture.

Her compositions now made up of cut photocopied pieces of her previous color pencil paintings glued on the surface of wide canvases with still more colorful and varied pallet appeard as a kind of artistic improvisation of fantastic free dancing outfits often breaking through the surface and the frame of the canvas as though refusing to be imprisoned in any limited fixed form. Her few brilliant joint works with other painters (Gholamhossein Nami, Fereydoon Ave, Manijeh Mir-Emadi and particularly the Indian painter Manjit Bawa) completes this collection. One of the best exhibitions of this period, held in Niavaran Gallery under the title of Dowry of the Fairy Tale Princes… show all the features of this period, i.e. the synthesis of figurative art and modern structure, very well.

After 2000, Parvaneh Etemadi ventured new experiences. Participation in an installation calling public attention to the environment in Hanover, Germany in the same year, working with ceramic and combining it with calligraphy displayed in an applied art exhibition held at House of Iranian Artists and finally beginning a new period (still continuing) exhibited under the title Once upon a Time (1) held at Golestan Gallery in 2004 showing the peak of her collages, this time combined with ancient Iranian myths, fables and literature, and revealing her attention to and criticism of the social air of contemporary Iran together with a bit of separation from pure figuration, arriving at a kind of personal artistic closeness to all her artistic achievements, narrative expression, figuration, technical maturity and perfection as well as a new postmodern look at the turbulent world.

Parvaneh Etemadi’s last exhibition Once upon a Time (2) held at Mah Gallery in 2009 was a continuation of her previous exhibition accompanied with an made out of more or less her previous collages showing yet another dimension of Etemadi’s work.

Bibliography:

Apart from several booklets, there are two books about Parvaneh Etemadi

1. Parvaneh Etemadi, selected works 1966-1998 by Manijeh Mir-Emadi, Iranian Art Publishing, 1998, bilingual, 323 pages.

2. Once Upon a Time, a collection of 20 works, Mitra Shambiani, Zarin and Simin publishing house, 2004, bilingual, 64 pages.

Farairan’ reviews about Parvaneh Etemadi:

Representation and Recreation of Reality, Javad Mojabi/ Farairan Art Quarterly/no.1, summer 1999.

News & Art, On the occasion of Parvaneh Etemadi’s Art Exhibition: Once upon a Time (2), Roya Monajem,

 

Farairan’ Choice Kamran Katouzian

/in

Born in 1941, Tehran

Education:
1965, BFA in Fine Arts, Windham College, Putney, VT, USA
1965-1967, School of Architecture, University of Tehran

Awards / Recognition:
1965, 4th Biennale, Tehran
Grand Prize winner for works in both painting and sculptor
Paris Biennale
1965, Represented Iranian Contemporary Art, Paris
Venice Biennale
1966, Represented Iranian Contemporary Art, Venice, Italy
1977, Washington International Art Festival, Washington DC, USA
Rome National Museum of Traditional Art
2000, Represented Iranian Contemporary Art, Rome, Italy

Works in Collections:
Contemporary Art Museum, Tehran
Contemporary Art Museum, Kashan
Museum Of Modern Art, New York

An Influential Pioneer of Iranian Modern Painting

Kamran Katuzian: A personal journey in the synthesis of graphic and abstract arts

Translated by: Roya Monajem

Kamran Katouzian, the graphic designer, art director and painter is a highly revered influential figure of Iranian modern arts who successfully managed to combine Iranian traditions and major elements of Iranian visual arts, and incorporated them in the well-known frame-works of the contemporary global art. Although as a prominent influential painter, his appearance on the scene of arts happened with long intervals and with great contemplation, nevertheless his artistic activities on the scene of graphic arts and advertisement on one hand, and Iranian abstract arts on the other, did not remain hidden from the eyes of art virtuoso, colleagues, art critics and art historians of Iran.

Born in 1941 in Tehran, he showed his deep interest in painting from childhood: “When still young, I sometimes was quite naughty, drawing a bank note on a piece of white paper, buying things from the grocery nearby with it. Of course, the grocer always would later find out about it and would come to fetch his money, but on the first glance, the folded paper looked like real money.”

After finishing his ninth grade, his father decided to send him to America: “I was to enroll in a private boarding school with a German headmaster. They sent us their prospectus to familiarize us with the place. There was also a photo of the headmaster which I copied with calligraphic pen and ink on a small china plate, fixed it and took plate with myself to America. The headmaster loved it and put it on the wall of his room.”

The journey to America had a taste of dream and fantasy for him: “The school’s atmosphere and national variety gradually shaped me and built my personality.”

After finishing high school (1959), he decided to study arts without the slightest doubt: “No other field of studies felt that close to me.”

So he goes from Massachusetts to Boston to study fine arts at a small college affiliated to Harvard in Cambridge. “The dean of the college was famous Giacometti, but I never met him, as he didn’t live in America… I studied there for two years… The teaching staffs there were so well-known that we seldom could see them… One of them advised me to go to the art college in Vermont… The was a great move and there I learnt a lot of things which were impossible to learn in Cambridge.”

“My turn to Modern painting happened in 1962; that is when I met William Hunt –whom to me is one of the best American contemporary painters. As a teacher, he taught me the real philosophy of art and developed my approach to art.”

After graduation, Katouzian returned to Iran for two years (1962-64). He applied for a job in the Office of Art and Culture and was immediately employed. It was in that office where he befriended Changiz Shahvaq and Naser Mofakham with whom they founded Saba Gallery in Saba Street (1964).

The gallery while holding exhibitions for Modernist painters, gradually turned into a haunt for those interested in Modern art.” We held poetry reading nights at Saba Gallery. Poets and painters would read their poems, like Sheybani and Sepehri for example. Our other youthful venture then was to hold an exhibition of art pioneers and students in the pavement running along Daneshju Park. Each painter stood next to his painting with the pavement packed with old and young people. This was the first time that such a scene happened in Tehran. Strange happening making a lot of hubbub. Such adventurous sweet time it was.”

With his painting titled When my Father’s Father was Young and an abstract metal sculpture, Katouzian participated at Tehran 4th painting Biennial and won the first award jointly with Zhazeh Tabatabee.
His presence in the Office of Art and Culture did not last long and after a few month he preferred to earn his daily bread by working in the field of graphic art. “In the mornings I worked in Saba Gallery making logo and mottos, but there was not much work.”

In 1964 Katouzian went back to America again and on returning held his first solo exhibition at Saba Gallery. In the catalogue of the exhibition he said about his works: “There are various styles in the art of our time with abstract art being the most obscure and revolutionary, adopted by painters and artists of the world to break through the past obsessions and thought-barriers, exaggerating sometimes to the highest limits…”

He then studied architecture for two years (1965-66), but left it unfinished to join Behshar industrial group to direct their advertisement department. During the two years Katouzian worked in that progressive company, he transformed the air of advertisement in the country.

After serving the compulsory military service for two years, he appealed to painting for a time, yet little by little his activity on the scene of graphic arts becomes more prominent, finally turning into his main activity, treating painting as a hobby: “Although painting, but I was in love with advertisement. The frames they drew, the mottos they wrote, not only graphic, but also Copy Writing, it absolutely fascinated me… “ He then joins Vega advertisement company, finally founding his own advertisement company Avant-garde in the closing years of 60s. His work for AEG, Pars Electric, Whirl Pool, Seiko and… was so innovative and successful that not only thoroughly transformed the art of advertisement in Iran, but left a deep impression both on Iranian graphic arts and commercial advertisement.

Despite that, he nevertheless continued participating in group exhibitions, as for example, at the international art festival in Washington in 1956. His preoccupation with painting before the revolution was concentrated on abstract painting and pop art. In a joint exhibition with Changiz Shahvaq in Farid Gallery, he writes in the catalogue: “Those who defame these silent livings have insulted me as well. My paintings are a part of my soul. So if we look more carefully at these paintings and contemplate on the world we live in, we will see that painting is the essence of time and social transformations, reflecting our world seen unconsciously through the window of my eyes rendered in these images. The goal is not to amuse you in a hypocritical way, because they are expressions of my real world, but let’s see what you think about them…”

In a short report published in the Journal of Art and Architecture (No. 39, 40, 1977, p.9), on his exhibition at Goethe Gallery, some of his paintings in the style of pop art were also published. Analyzing and configuring Katuzian’s visual creations, Javad Mojabi believes: “We find a few distinct themes in his works created prior to1980s. In one context there are these fashionable women who appear as though stepping out of beauty and fashion magazines to enter another context…each struggling in a way to understand her own individuality.

In another context, the painter has summarized volumes of nature in line and color in an abstract way and … with rapid rebellious movements of his brush, he has tried warm joyful summer and autumn colors on the grey white winter backgrounds… sometimes he shows the conflict of geometrical shapes with non-geometrical disorder… delirious rhombic movements of crossing lines… masses of distorted alphabets… fading in brightness to reach darkness… dance of alphabets … without reaching semantic frankness from cryptic allusion.”

After the advent of the revolution, particularly after the war with Iraq (1980-1988), not only Katouzian revived the stagnant and forgotten fields of graphic arts and advertisement in his newly established company Karpay, but by holding several exhibitions (of his own new works and others, including Gholamhossein Nami), he resumed public presentation of visual arts in the country.
During the early years of 1990s, he changed the face of the war-stricken city by erecting mural panels and billboards in highways and streets, thereby initiating urban advertisement and a kind of artistic activity which led to the development of the idea of urban aesthetics in Tehran and a few other large cities. His activity on the scene of advertisement in the course of four decades of his presence in the fields of graphic arts and commercial advertisement in the press as well as the city itself has always been innovative, original and ingenious.

On the other hand, Katouzian’s preoccupation with painting decreased even more after 60s. He stopped painting in the style of pop art altogether and appealed to abstract art. He held only one solo exhibition in 1989 at Karteh Gallery with his next exhibition happening 20 years later at Mah-o-Mehr Gallery (2010).

In regard to his new works, Mojabi writes: “Colors appear more transparent and stronger in the firm composition of spaces of his paintings… Configurations possess freedom and resoluteness. Feminine element has disappeared, but two of his previous elements, i.e. interwoven rebellious lines and colorful volumes reminding abstract nature make powerful fine balanced compositions, sometimes together and other times apart from each other…” And he adds: “It is the feast of color games of a painter who plays young and in his old age wishes to create a space of color and light of all that he has seen in the world in the briefest expressive way reflecting his nostalgia and poetic disposition.”

And Katouzian himself says: “On the whole, I am an abstract painter. Pop art goes back to my youth; it was experimentation and adventure; a sweet pleasant period, not that much far away from abstract painting. And when I once again resumed working in abstract style, my works were naturally more mature, gradually abandoning formalism, fear and anguish (as formalism is usually the result of fear and anguish) which existed before. Now I feel total freedom when working and all that which previously I had to observe now happens unconsciously….In abstract expressionist painting, it is not only courageous behavior and movements of the painter which shapes the work, but also there is subtlety, contemplation and a significant degree of sensibility. Nevertheless, one thing that has to be there and it is always there is the artist’s mastery. That is to say, without this mastery the work will not come out right. When you begin, you don’t know what you are doing; you can’t know, it is a kind of improvisation. It is like jazz music; the first touch of the paintbrush on the canvas becomes a musical instrument. The next instrument must be somehow in harmony with the first. So are the next touches. Yet, too much harmony can spoil the work too. Sometimes inharmonious touches are imperative in order to give shape to the work… their movement should be in the direction needed. This makes the skeleton of an abstract work. A visual revelation, with everything laid down within the framework of this formula…”
Katouzian’s path from personal conscious and artistic synthesis of native cultural elements and motives, from calligraphy to geometry and symmetry, from graphical structure and framework combined with abstract expressionism, to reaching the evolved mature abstraction of his recent years in the most minimalist and beautiful forms, in this contrast of masses of accumulated energy in the limitless space of his canvases, in aggression and explosion of accumulated energy at the center of the painting and particularly his expressive utilization of colors, combining warm and cold colors, all point to the search of a reflective intellectual artist and his attempts to transform and objectify his mental, individual and social challenges in a tumutuous society in which he has lived for years, into beautiful curtains of abstract forms exhibiting firmness, balance and individuality.

References:

Chopogh site
A Glance at Iranian Graphic Art, An interview with Kamran Katouzian, Arash Tanhaee, Tandis, No. 152, 2009
Wishes the city to be more beautiful, Javad Mojabi, Etemad Newspaper, 2009