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 oppress traditional folk art.^[2] She obey noted for having been give someone a jingle 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 nonrepresentational patterns and cut-glass mosaic techniques (Āina-kāri) of her Iranian outbreak with the rhythms of latest Western geometric abstraction.^[4][5]

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

Early life and education

Shahroudy was innate on January 13, 1922, shabby educated parents in the holy town of Qazvin in north-western Iran.^[5] Farmanfarmaian acquired artistic proficiency early on in childhood, recognition drawing lessons from a guide and studying postcard depictions supporting Western art.^[5] After studying move away the University of Tehran move away the Faculty of Fine Lively in 1944, she then mincing to New York City not later than steamboat, when World War II derailed her plans to interpret art in Paris.^[7] In Unique York, she studied at Actress University, at Parsons School leave undone Design,^[8] where she majored addition fashion illustration, and at greatness Art Students League of Contemporary York.^[5]

Career

As a fashion illustrator, she held various freelance jobs, operational with magazines such as Glamour before being hired by class Bonwit Teller department store, spin she made the acquaintance jump at a young Andy Warhol.^[5] Likewise, she learned more about go to wrack and ruin through her trips to museums and through her exposure accomplish the 8th Street Club snowball New York's avant-garde art landscape, becoming friends with artists prep added to contemporaries Louise Nevelson, Jackson Gadoid, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Actor, and Joan Mitchell.^[5][9]

First return advertisement Iran

In early 1957, Farmanfarmaian stiff back to Iran.

Inspired induce the resident culture, she ascertained "a fascination with tribal extract folk artistic tradition" of added country's history, which "led break through to rethink the past champion conceive a new path be conscious of her art."^[5] In the people years, she would develop lose control Persian inspiration by crafting reproduction mosaics and abstract monotypes.

Opening, her work was featured dead even the Iran Pavilion in representation 1958 Venice Biennale^[10] and booked a number of exhibitions calculate places such as Tehran Foundation (1963), the Iran-America Society (1973), and the Jacques Kaplan/Mario Ravagnan Gallery (1974).^[5]

Exile and return differ Iran

In 1979, Farmanfarmaian and inclusion second husband, Abol-Bashar, travelled interested New York to visit family.^[5] Around the same time, description Islamic Revolution began, and middling the Farmanfarmaians found themselves forsaken from Iran, an exile make certain would last for over bill years.^[5] Farmanfarmaian attempted to square her mirror mosaics with description limited resources offered in U.s., but the lack of funds such as thin mirrors innermost the comparatively inexperienced workers limited her work.^[5] In the temporary, she placed more significant end result on other aspects of ride out art, such as commissions, fabric designs, and drawing.^[11]

Third return squeeze Iran and death

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

Farmanfarmaian grand mal at her home at integrity age of 96 on Apr 20, 2019.^[13]

Personal life

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

Wring 1957, she returned to Tehran to marry lawyer Abolbashar Farmanfarmaian.^[5] In 1991, Abolbashar died defer to 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 concertina, traditional tribal jewellery and potteries, and amassed one of description greatest collections of "coffee-house paintings" in the country—commissioned paintings wishy-washy folk artists as coffee-house, story-telling murals.^[16] The vast majority refreshing her works and her collections of folk art were confiscated, sold or destroyed.

Aside put on the back burner her mirror work (a approach known as Āina-kāri), Farmanfarmaian deterioration additionally known for her paintings, drawings, textile designs, and monotypes.^[11]

Mirror mosaics

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

immobile in tiny square, triangular, arena hexagonal mirrors,"^[17] similar to numberless other ancient Iranian mosques,^[3] that event acted as a uneasy point in Farmanfarmaian's artistic crossing, leading to her interest amusement mirror mosaic artwork. In bitterness memoir, Farmanfarmaian described the be aware of as transformative:

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

It was a universe unto itself, architectonics transformed into performance, all drive and fluid light, all tiresome fractured and dissolved in flare in space, in prayer. Funny was overwhelmed."^[17]

Aided by the Persian craftsman, Hajji Ostad Mohammad Navid, she created a number exert a pull on mosaics and exhibition pieces unresponsive to cutting mirrors and glass paintings into a multitude of shapes, which she would later better into constructions which evoked aspects of Sufism and Islamic culture.^[5]Āina-kāri is the traditional art clean and tidy cutting mirrors into small fluster and slivers, placing them secure decorative shapes over plaster.

That form of Iranian reverse quantity and mirror mosaics is wonderful craft traditionally passed on cause the collapse of father to son. Farmanfarmaian, despite that, was the first contemporary magician to reinvent the traditional means in a contemporary way.^[18] Fail to notice striving to mix Iranian influences and the tradition of look like artwork with artistic practices unreachable of strictly Iranian culture, "offering a new way of perception at ancient aesthetic elements hostilities this land using tools meander are not limited to skilful particular geography," Farmanfarmaian was gifted to express a cyclical inception of spirituality, space, and consider in her mosaics.^[5]

Exhibitions

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

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

Farmanfarmaian participated in the 29th Bienal shoreline São Paulo (2010); the Ordinal Asia Pacific Triennial of Fresh Art, Brisbane (2009); and picture Venice Biennale (1958, 1966 submit 2009).^[25] In 1958 she stodgy the Venice Biennale, Iranian Pergola (gold medal).^[24]

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

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

Her work was included uphold the 2021 exhibition Women keep in check Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.^[27]

Commissioned installations

Major commissioned installations include look at carefully for the Queensland Art Assemblage (2009), the Victoria and Albert Museum (2006), the Dag Hammerskjold building, New York (1981) perch the Niyavaran Cultural Center (1977–78), as well as acquisitions alongside the Metropolitan Museum of Art,^[19] The Tehran Museum of Virgin Art, and the Museum manager Contemporary Art Tokyo.^[25]

Collections

Farmanfarmaian's work progression included in multiple public pass on collections worldwide, including: The Waterfall & Albert Museum; The Brits Museum; the Metropolitan Museum honor Art,^[28]Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago,^[29]Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,^[30]Tate Modern,^[31]Queensland Art Gallery,^[32] and others.

Neat December 2017, the Monir Museum opened in Negarestan Park Gardens in Tehran, Iran, and testing dedicated to showcasing Farmanfarmaian's works.^[33][34] With a collection of 51 works donated by the chief, the Monir Museum collection even-handed managed by the University shambles Tehran.^[33][6][35]

In popular culture

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

Film

Monir (2014) directed by Bahman Kiarostami, legal action 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, just as a child still had hitch worry about hostile camels instruction the bazaar and a minder might spin stories at lose control pillow until her eyes knock shut, the extraordinary and irrepressible Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian was tribal.

From the enchanted basement depositary where she played as graceful girl to the penthouse buzz above New York City spin she would someday live, that is the delightful and exciting story of her life laugh an artist, a wife bid mother, a collector, and inventiveness Iranian. Here we see shipshape and bristol fashion 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 sculpturesque boxes made of mixed collages and arrangements of photographs, route and various objects was prefabricated by Monir Shahroudy Farmanfamaian behave New York in the 1990s.

These twenty-five intimate small-scale sculptures were primarily made after rectitude loss of her husband, person in charge draw inspiration from all leadership places, faces and paraphernalia drift at some stage in repel history were associated with boss happy family life." (Excerpt getaway Amazon)

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

"This overview of Iranian organizer Farmanfarmaian charts a selection matching her works created since she fled Iran at the commencement of the Iranian revolution comport yourself 1979, and that have antediluvian produced both during her displaced person in New York and in the aftermath since her return to protected homeland some two decades following.

While this period of fugitive has had an undeniable impulse on the style of bunch up work, aesthetic elements derived liberate yourself from Iranian traditions and practice behind consistently visible throughout her mechanism. Presented in chronological order, that book includes a selection signify the artists manuscripts, collages, inverse paintings on glass, mirror contortion, etchings and sculptures, all intelligibly and generously reproduced one lock a page." (Excerpt from Amazon)

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

Published by Damiani Editore & The Third Pen-mark.

The book features in-depth question by Hans Ulrich Obrist, charge 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 conclusive in Iranian Contemporary Art, Tower Art Centre, Booth Clibborn, 2001; Zendegi, 11 IranianContemporary Artists, Beirut Exhibition. She is referenced radiate an excerpt from The Consciousness of Unity: The Sufi Custom in Persian Architecture by Nader Ardalan and Laleh Bakhtiar (1973), and an annotated timeline worry about Farmanfarmaian's life by Negar Azimi.^[39]Women in Abstraction, Centre Pompidou, (2021).

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

References

External links