Aydin Aghdashloo
Aydin Aghdashloo, born in 1940 in Rasht, is a painter, graphic designer, calligrapher, writer, critic, expert, and teacher. Aghdashloo can arguably be considered one of the most prolific artists in the field of culture and art. Aghdashloo has come a long way in the field of visual arts, from collecting and holding important exhibitions of Iranian artists inside and outside the country, to making films in this field, teaching numerous students, and collaborating and consulting in the establishment of museums such as the Reza Abbasi Museum, the Glassware and Ceramics Museum, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, and the museums of Kerman and Khorramabad.
Before the revolution, Aghdashloo could be considered among the artists associated with figurative modernist tendencies. He created unique works with unparalleled skill and a hybrid knowledge of Persian painting and mastery of Western painting. His works have multiple facets, but he is best known for his figurative paintings and portraits. One of Aghdashloo's most famous collections is "Memories of Destruction," which began in the mid-1970s and was formed with hints of a postmodernist approach. This collection initially began with adaptations of Renaissance masters' portraits, intentionally representing distorted and ambiguous images of them, and in later years continued and solidified with images taken from other pictorial traditions and hints of surrealism. Another notable collection is "Years of Fire and Snow," which began in the late 1970s. The pictorial elements of this collection, with a critical tone, aligned symbolically with the social changes taking place in Iran at that time. In the 1980s and 1990s, in the "Orientalists" series, he breaks, crumples, sometimes tears, sometimes releases, and sometimes reassembles precious objects in a different way, a kind of intra-painting collage that is recreated within the painting itself without the intervention of any foreign object, but this time with a different spirit and renewed value. Collapse and the illusion of repetition are among the deepest messages of this series of his works. This artist has continued this series of works, along with his still life works, with different perspectives to this day. Throughout his years of activity, his works have been presented in various auctions internationally and in Iran. In 2015, he received the Chevalier of Arts and Letters from France.
Saadat Afzood
Photo by Mohammad Ehsaei
