Iran Darroudi
Iran Darroudi was born in 1936 in a family adhering to Iranian traditions in Mashhad. Darroudi's father raised her with the Shahnameh, and her mother introduced her to European music, and Darroudi took her first piano lessons from her mother. The first years of this outstanding artist's life were spent in Mashhad, Germany and her youth in Tehran. After this period, she went to Paris for academic training in painting, and along with learning French, she began to learn painting at the School of Fine Arts in Paris. At the same time, the most important help and friend in Darroudi's life, namely her sister Pouran, was also learning clothes and fabric design in Paris. In the early years, Iran took the first steps in painting by copying the works of great European artists. At the beginning of the 1960s, Darroudi quickly reached a personal expression in painting, and her works gained a special place in the galleries of Tehran and Paris at that time.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Darroudi gained many experiences of calligraphy, abstract and even figurative painting, all of which indicated the future of an artist mastering form and meaning. In the 1960s, Darroudi, by relying on elements such as light, space and perspective in painting, reached a special and significant expression in the medium of painting, and in addition to the personal expression that places her close to the school of surrealism, she was inspired by the impulses and events of the 1960s and 70s of her country. Many of her works during this period are in an unbreakable and deep connection with the homeland, the history of Iran, the Persian Gulf, etc. This interest and attraction to Iran, Iranian culture, Persian language and the vast area of ancient Iran never left Darroudi’s mind until her breaths.
She spent a long period of her life in Paris, but she never forgot her national heritage, and although her works were linked to modern world art, they also reflected the national heritage of her country, Iran. Apart from painting, which Darroudi was always fascinated by this media, she organized and directed many programs with her husband Parviz Moghadasi on television. In addition to working on television, Darroudi also taught art history. Apart from the mentioned cases, due to her personal interest in the Persian language, Darroudi also wrote autobiographies and the famous book “In The Distance Between Two Points” has been reprinted more than 30 times. This book brought a lot of fame to Darroudi because, apart from her sincerity in writing memoirs, the power of her pen and fluent prose places the book in a valuable position in terms of memoirs and autobiography. Darroudi's works have been displayed in various galleries and museums in Iran and the world, among her most important exhibitions is the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition in 2015. After a long and continuous effort, Iran Darroudi died in Tehran in 2021 and left behind a great legacy of a deep view at light in painting, mobility of space and thought.
Sohrab Ahmadi
