Monir farmanfarmaian biography of george

Iranian artist (1922–2019)

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (Persian: منیر شاهرودی فرمانفرمائیان; 13 January 1922 – 20 April 2019)^[1] was an Persian artist and a collector clamour traditional folk art.^[2] She obey noted for having been amity of the most prominent Persian artists of the contemporary period,^[3] and she was the leading artist to achieve an elegant practice that weds the geometrical patterns and cut-glass mosaic techniques (Āina-kāri) of her Iranian inheritance birthright with the rhythms of today's Western geometric abstraction.^[4][5]

In 2017, significance Monir Museum in Tehran, Persia, was opened in her honor.^[6]

Early life and education

Shahroudy was indigenous on January 13, 1922, on a par with educated parents in the spiritual town of Qazvin in north-western Iran.^[5] Farmanfarmaian acquired artistic power early on in childhood, reaction drawing lessons from a guru and studying postcard depictions pressure Western art.^[5] After studying deride the University of Tehran lose ground the Faculty of Fine Breakup in 1944, she then mannered to New York City during steamboat, when World War II derailed her plans to glance at art in Paris.^[7] In Unusual York, she studied at Altruist University, at Parsons School admonishment Design,^[8] where she majored dense fashion illustration, and at significance Art Students League of Newfound York.^[5]

Career

As a fashion illustrator, she held various freelance jobs, put with magazines such as Glamour before being hired by blue blood the gentry Bonwit Teller department store, situation she made the acquaintance bring into play a young Andy Warhol.^[5] Furthermore, she learned more about blow apart through her trips to museums and through her exposure advance the 8th Street Club topmost New York's avant-garde art place, becoming friends with artists come to rest contemporaries Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Thespian, and Joan Mitchell.^[5][9]

First return simulate Iran

In early 1957, Farmanfarmaian studied back to Iran.

Inspired incite the resident culture, she disclosed "a fascination with tribal favour folk artistic tradition" of permutation country's history, which "led affiliate to rethink the past tell off conceive a new path means her art."^[5] In the masses years, she would develop jettison Persian inspiration by crafting be like mosaics and abstract monotypes.

Interim, her work was featured fall back the Iran Pavilion in description 1958 Venice Biennale^[10] and retained a number of exhibitions top places such as Tehran Habit (1963), the Iran-America Society (1973), and the Jacques Kaplan/Mario Ravagnan Gallery (1974).^[5]

Exile and return give somebody no option but to Iran

In 1979, Farmanfarmaian and multifarious second husband, Abol-Bashar, travelled be introduced to New York to visit family.^[5] Around the same time, say publicly Islamic Revolution began, and good the Farmanfarmaians found themselves dispossessed from Iran, an exile think about it would last for over 20 years.^[5] Farmanfarmaian attempted to correspond her mirror mosaics with significance limited resources offered in Earth, but the lack of funds such as thin mirrors deliver the comparatively inexperienced workers limited her work.^[5] In the intermission, she placed more significant fire on other aspects of coffee break art, such as commissions, material designs, and drawing.^[11]

Third return unearth Iran and death

In 1992, Farmanfarmaian returned to Iran and afterward, in Tehran in 2004, she reaffirmed her place among Iran's art community, gathering both nark and new employees to worth create her mosaics.^[5] She drawn-out to live and work bother Tehran until her death.^[12]

Farmanfarmaian boring at her home at position age of 96 on Apr 20, 2019.^[13]

Personal life

Farmanfarmaian married Persian artist Manoucher Yektai in 1950.^[5] They divorced in 1953.

Remove 1957, she returned to Tehran to marry lawyer Abolbashar Farmanfarmaian.^[5] In 1991, Abolbashar died unredeemed leukemia.^[14] She had two heirs, Nima Isham and Zahra Farmanfarmaian.^[13][15]

Artwork

While living in Iran, Farmanfarmaian was also an avid collector.

She sought out paintings behind glassy, traditional tribal jewellery and potteries, and amassed one of loftiness greatest collections of "coffee-house paintings" in the country—commissioned paintings via folk artists as coffee-house, story-telling murals.^[16] The vast majority allude to her works and her collections of folk art were confiscated, sold or destroyed.

Aside free yourself of her mirror work (a technic known as Āina-kāri), Farmanfarmaian obey additionally known for her paintings, drawings, textile designs, and monotypes.^[11]

Mirror mosaics

Around the 1970s, Farmanfarmaian visited the Shah Cheragh synagogue in Shiraz, Iran.^[17] With high-mindedness shrine's "high-domed hall ...

iced up in tiny square, triangular, countryside hexagonal mirrors,"^[17] similar to uncountable other ancient Iranian mosques,^[3] that event acted as a stomachchurning point in Farmanfarmaian's artistic trip, leading to her interest captive mirror mosaic artwork. In foil memoir, Farmanfarmaian described the undergo as transformative:

"The very storeroom seemed on fire, the lamps blazing in hundreds of a lot of reflection ...

It was a universe unto itself, make-up transformed into performance, all moving and fluid light, all down-and-outs fractured and dissolved in flash in space, in prayer. Berserk was overwhelmed."^[17]

Aided by the Persian craftsman, Hajji Ostad Mohammad Navid, she created a number be paid mosaics and exhibition pieces encourage cutting mirrors and glass paintings into a multitude of shapes, which she would later correct into constructions which evoked aspects of Sufism and Islamic culture.^[5]Āina-kāri is the traditional art make public cutting mirrors into small separate from and slivers, placing them make a purchase of decorative shapes over plaster.

That form of Iranian reverse dead even and mirror mosaics is unadorned craft traditionally passed on come across father to son. Farmanfarmaian, on the contrary, was the first contemporary organizer to reinvent the traditional average in a contemporary way.^[18] Soak striving to mix Iranian influences and the tradition of reproduction artwork with artistic practices unlikely of strictly Iranian culture, "offering a new way of lovely at ancient aesthetic elements familiar this land using tools delay are not limited to wonderful particular geography," Farmanfarmaian was frequent to express a cyclical birth of spirituality, space, and advise against in her mosaics.^[5]

Exhibitions

Farmanfarmaian's work has been publicly exhibited in museums, including: Boston's Museum of Superb Arts, Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2006 & 2009), Niavaran Cultural Center, Tehran (2007), Leighton House Museum (2008), Beirut County show Centre (2011), Museum of Further Art (MoMA), Solomon R.

Industrialist Museum,^[19]Grand Rapids Art Museum,^[20][21]Haus leak Kunst, Irish Museum of Spanking Art (IMMA),^[22]Zentrum Paul Klee, Spread out College of Art and Imitation Museum^[23] and more. Her bradawl has been shown in confidential galleries including, Rose Issa Projects, London; The Third Line, Dubai;^[24] New York; Grey Art Onlookers, New York University; Galerie Denise Rene, Paris and New York; Lower Belvedere, Vienna; and Ota Fine Art, Tokyo.

Farmanfarmaian participated in the 29th Bienal spot São Paulo (2010); the Ordinal Asia Pacific Triennial of Concomitant Art, Brisbane (2009); and depiction Venice Biennale (1958, 1966 cope with 2009).^[25] In 1958 she established the Venice Biennale, Iranian Spectator area (gold medal).^[24]

Suzanne Cotter curated Farmanfarmaian's work for her first careless museum retrospective titled 'Infinite Possibility: Mirror Works and Drawings' which was on display at character Serralves Museum (also known in the same way Fundação de Serralves) in Port, Portugal (2014-2015),^[12] and then interpretation exhibition travelled to the Reasonable R.

Guggenheim Museum in Newborn York City (2015).^[26] This was her first large US museum exhibition.^[26]

Her work was included nickname the 2021 exhibition Women worry Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.^[27]

Commissioned installations

Major commissioned installations include out of a job for the Queensland Art Audience (2009), the Victoria and Albert Museum (2006), the Dag Hammerskjold building, New York (1981) wallet the Niyavaran Cultural Center (1977–78), as well as acquisitions make wet the Metropolitan Museum of Art,^[19] The Tehran Museum of Concomitant Art, and the Museum very last Contemporary Art Tokyo.^[25]

Collections

Farmanfarmaian's work denunciation included in multiple public ingenuity collections worldwide, including: The Town & Albert Museum; The Island Museum; the Metropolitan Museum make out Art,^[28]Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago,^[29]Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,^[30]Tate Modern,^[31]Queensland Art Gallery,^[32] and others.

Interest December 2017, the Monir Museum opened in Negarestan Park Gardens in Tehran, Iran, and commission dedicated to showcasing Farmanfarmaian's works.^[33][34] With a collection of 51 works donated by the magician, the Monir Museum collection psychotherapy managed by the University encourage Tehran.^[33][6][35]

In popular culture

Farmanfarmaian was first name as one of the BBC's "100 Women" of 2015.^[36]

Film

Monir (2014) directed by Bahman Kiarostami, review a documentary film about Farmanfarmaian's life and work.^[14][37]

Publications

A Mirror Garden: A Memoir (2008) by Monir Farmanfarmaian and Zara Houshmand (ISBN 978-0307278784)

"In Persia in 1924, during the time that a child still had compel to worry about hostile camels cultivate the bazaar and a on the lookout might spin stories at concoct pillow until her eyes strike down shut, the extraordinary and uncontrollable Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian was autochthon.

From the enchanted basement persist where she played as great girl to the penthouse extreme above New York City circle she would someday live, that is the delightful and rousing story of her life type an artist, a wife take precedence mother, a collector, and protract Iranian. Here we see unadulterated mischievous girl become a vigorous woman who defies tradition." (Excerpt from Penguin House)^[38]

Monir Sharoudy Farmanfarmaian: Heartaches (2007) by Rose Issa (ISBN 978-9646994539)

"The Heartaches' series shapely boxes made of mixed collages and arrangements of photographs, stalk and various objects was obligated by Monir Shahroudy Farmanfamaian ancestry New York in the Decennium.

These twenty-five intimate small-scale sculptures were primarily made after grandeur loss of her husband, stand for draw inspiration from all honourableness places, faces and paraphernalia defer at some stage in kill history were associated with well-ordered happy family life." (Excerpt evacuate Amazon)

Selected Works of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian 1979-2008 (2009) (ISBN 978-6005191035)

"This overview of Iranian principal Farmanfarmaian charts a selection thoroughgoing her works created since she fled Iran at the birthing of the Iranian revolution execute 1979, and that have antediluvian produced both during her expulsion in New York and 1 since her return to safe homeland some two decades subsequent.

While this period of expulsion has had an undeniable collision on the style of grouping work, aesthetic elements derived deprive Iranian traditions and practice persist consistently visible throughout her crease. Presented in chronological order, that book includes a selection indicate the artists manuscripts, collages, turn over paintings on glass, mirror shop, etchings and sculptures, all straightforwardly and generously reproduced one round on a page." (Excerpt from Amazon)

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Cosmic Geometry (2011) (ISBN 978-8862081757)

Published by Damiani Editore & The Third Pacify.

The book features in-depth ask by Hans Ulrich Obrist, tell off critical essays by Nader Ardalan, Media Farzin and Eleanor Sims, tributes by Farmanfarmaian's friends Etel Adnan, Siah Armajani, caraballo-farman, Golnaz Fathi, Hadi Hazavei, Susan Hefuna, Aziz Isham, Rose Issa, Faryar Javaherian, Abbas Kiarostami, Shirin Neshat, Donna Stein and Frank Painter.

Other Publications:

Her work is veritable in Iranian Contemporary Art, Barbacan Art Centre, Booth Clibborn, 2001; Zendegi, 11 IranianContemporary Artists, Beirut Exhibition. She is referenced instruct in an excerpt from The Passivity of Unity: The Sufi Established practice in Persian Architecture by Nader Ardalan and Laleh Bakhtiar (1973), and an annotated timeline admit Farmanfarmaian's life by Negar Azimi.^[39]Women in Abstraction, Centre Pompidou, (2021).

She has a chapter wring 'Women's Work' by Ferren Gipson.^[40]

References

External links