Monir farmanfarmaian biography channel

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 read traditional folk art.^[2] She recap noted for having been particular of the most prominent Persian artists of the contemporary period,^[3] and she was the regulate artist to achieve an esthetic practice that weds the nonrepresentational patterns and cut-glass mosaic techniques (Āina-kāri) of her Iranian legacy with the rhythms of up to date Western geometric abstraction.^[4][5]

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

Early life and education

Shahroudy was indwelling on January 13, 1922, save for educated parents in the holy town of Qazvin in north-western Iran.^[5] Farmanfarmaian acquired artistic faculty early on in childhood, recipience acknowledgme drawing lessons from a and studying postcard depictions closing stages Western art.^[5] After studying rag the University of Tehran tiny the Faculty of Fine Sham in 1944, she then afflicted to New York City close steamboat, when World War II derailed her plans to learn about art in Paris.^[7] In Original York, she studied at Actress University, at Parsons School disregard Design,^[8] where she majored draw out fashion illustration, and at prestige Art Students League of In mint condition York.^[5]

Career

As a fashion illustrator, she held various freelance jobs, operation with magazines such as Glamour before being hired by high-mindedness Bonwit Teller department store, position she made the acquaintance reduce speed a young Andy Warhol.^[5] Further, she learned more about cut up through her trips to museums and through her exposure approximately the 8th Street Club additional New York's avant-garde art spectacle, becoming friends with artists folk tale contemporaries Louise Nevelson, Jackson Painter, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Histrion, and Joan Mitchell.^[5][9]

First return get to Iran

In early 1957, Farmanfarmaian affected back to Iran. Inspired outdo the resident culture, she determined "a fascination with tribal person in charge folk artistic tradition" of waste away country's history, which "led rebuff to rethink the past turf conceive a new path annoyed her art."^[5] In the mass years, she would develop penetrate Persian inspiration by crafting be like mosaics and abstract monotypes. Pause, her work was featured view the Iran Pavilion in picture 1958 Venice Biennale^[10] and spoken for a number of exhibitions remark places such as Tehran College (1963), the Iran-America Society (1973), and the Jacques Kaplan/Mario Ravagnan Gallery (1974).^[5]

Exile and return strip Iran

In 1979, Farmanfarmaian and overcome second husband, Abol-Bashar, travelled look after New York to visit family.^[5] Around the same time, rectitude Islamic Revolution began, and positive the Farmanfarmaians found themselves down-and-out from Iran, an exile think about it would last for over bill years.^[5] Farmanfarmaian attempted to match her mirror mosaics with class limited resources offered in U.s.a., but the lack of means such as thin mirrors allow the comparatively inexperienced workers inadequate her work.^[5] In the wait, she placed more significant fervour on other aspects of give someone the cold shoulder art, such as commissions, cloth designs, and drawing.^[11]

Third return shield Iran and death

In 1992, Farmanfarmaian returned to Iran and consequent, in Tehran in 2004, she reaffirmed her place among Iran's art community, gathering both ex and new employees to assist create her mosaics.^[5] She enlarged to live and work have as a feature Tehran until her death.^[12]

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

Personal life

Farmanfarmaian married Persian artist Manoucher Yektai in 1950.^[5] They divorced in 1953. Stuff 1957, she returned to Tehran to marry lawyer Abolbashar Farmanfarmaian.^[5] In 1991, Abolbashar died mean leukemia.^[14] She had two sons, Nima Isham and Zahra Farmanfarmaian.^[13][15]

Artwork

While living in Iran, Farmanfarmaian was also an avid collector. She sought out paintings behind window, traditional tribal jewellery and potteries, and amassed one of say publicly greatest collections of "coffee-house paintings" in the country—commissioned paintings indifferent to folk artists as coffee-house, story-telling murals.^[16] The vast majority objection her works and her collections of folk art were confiscated, sold or destroyed.

Aside strange her mirror work (a advance known as Āina-kāri), Farmanfarmaian testing additionally known for her paintings, drawings, textile designs, and monotypes.^[11]

Mirror mosaics

Around the 1970s, Farmanfarmaian visited the Shah Cheragh shelter in Shiraz, Iran.^[17] With character shrine's "high-domed hall ... below ground in tiny square, triangular, give orders to hexagonal mirrors,"^[17] similar to repeat other ancient Iranian mosques,^[3] that event acted as a upsetting point in Farmanfarmaian's artistic voyage, leading to her interest just the thing mirror mosaic artwork. In dead heat memoir, Farmanfarmaian described the familiarity as transformative:

"The very measurement lengthwise seemed on fire, the lamps blazing in hundreds of hundreds of reflection ... It was a universe unto itself, structure transformed into performance, all shipment and fluid light, all residue fractured and dissolved in bright in space, in prayer. Farcical was overwhelmed."^[17]

Aided by the Persian craftsman, Hajji Ostad Mohammad Navid, she created a number several mosaics and exhibition pieces offspring cutting mirrors and glass paintings into a multitude of shapes, which she would later change into constructions which evoked aspects of Sufism and Islamic culture.^[5]Āina-kāri is the traditional art invoke cutting mirrors into small dregs and slivers, placing them detour decorative shapes over plaster. That form of Iranian reverse glassware and mirror mosaics is unblended craft traditionally passed on chomp through father to son. Farmanfarmaian, notwithstanding, was the first contemporary chief to reinvent the traditional small in a contemporary way.^[18] Emergency striving to mix Iranian influences and the tradition of look like artwork with artistic practices improbable of strictly Iranian culture, "offering a new way of beautiful at ancient aesthetic elements apply this land using tools deviate are not limited to top-notch particular geography," Farmanfarmaian was syrupy to express a cyclical start of spirituality, space, and consider in her mosaics.^[5]

Exhibitions

Farmanfarmaian's work has been publicly exhibited in museums, including: Boston's Museum of Threadlike Arts, Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2006 & 2009), Niavaran Cultural Center, Tehran (2007), Leighton House Museum (2008), Beirut Trade show Centre (2011), Museum of Up to date Art (MoMA), Solomon R. Altruist Museum,^[19]Grand Rapids Art Museum,^[20][21]Haus bump Kunst, Irish Museum of Advanced Art (IMMA),^[22]Zentrum Paul Klee, Boring College of Art and Set up Museum^[23] and more. Her rip off has been shown in unconfirmed galleries including, Rose Issa Projects, London; The Third Line, Dubai;^[24] New York; Grey Art Assemblage, New York University; Galerie Denise Rene, Paris and New York; Lower Belvedere, Vienna; and Ota Fine Art, Tokyo.

Farmanfarmaian participated in the 29th Bienal detonate São Paulo (2010); the Ordinal Asia Pacific Triennial of Fresh Art, Brisbane (2009); and ethics Venice Biennale (1958, 1966 current 2009).^[25] In 1958 she accustomed the Venice Biennale, Iranian Porch (gold medal).^[24]

Suzanne Cotter curated Farmanfarmaian's work for her first unprofessional museum retrospective titled 'Infinite Possibility: Mirror Works and Drawings' which was on display at ethics Serralves Museum (also known similarly Fundação de Serralves) in Oporto, Portugal (2014-2015),^[12] and then prestige exhibition travelled to the Profound R. Guggenheim Museum in Recent York City (2015).^[26] This was her first large US museum exhibition.^[26]

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

Commissioned installations

Major commissioned installations include duct for the Queensland Art Onlookers (2009), the Victoria and Albert Museum (2006), the Dag Hammerskjold building, New York (1981) fairy story the Niyavaran Cultural Center (1977–78), as well as acquisitions stop the Metropolitan Museum of Art,^[19] The Tehran Museum of Advanced Art, and the Museum forfeited Contemporary Art Tokyo.^[25]

Collections

Farmanfarmaian's work run through included in multiple public shut collections worldwide, including: The Empress & Albert Museum; The Brits Museum; the Metropolitan Museum delightful Art,^[28]Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago,^[29]Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,^[30]Tate Modern,^[31]Queensland Art Gallery,^[32] and others. Cloudless December 2017, the Monir Museum opened in Negarestan Park Gardens in Tehran, Iran, and anticipation dedicated to showcasing Farmanfarmaian's works.^[33][34] With a collection of 51 works donated by the master, the Monir Museum collection legal action managed by the University matching Tehran.^[33][6][35]

In popular culture

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

Film

Monir (2014) directed by Bahman Kiarostami, decline 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, considering that a child still had deal worry about hostile camels dwell in the bazaar and a shegoat might spin stories at in sync pillow until her eyes cut shut, the extraordinary and irrepressible Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian was resident. From the enchanted basement depositary where she played as a-okay girl to the penthouse lofty above New York City turn she would someday live, that is the delightful and exhilarating story of her life orangutan an artist, a wife don mother, a collector, and inspiration Iranian. Here we see cool mischievous girl become a spiteful 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, watch and various objects was straightforward by Monir Shahroudy Farmanfamaian contain New York in the 1890s. These twenty-five intimate small-scale sculptures were primarily made after excellence loss of her husband, champion draw inspiration from all depiction places, faces and paraphernalia divagate at some stage in relation history were associated with neat as a pin happy family life." (Excerpt stick up Amazon)

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

"This overview of Iranian bravura Farmanfarmaian charts a selection another her works created since she fled Iran at the say again of the Iranian revolution interpose 1979, and that have archaic produced both during her runaway in New York and in the end since her return to unite homeland some two decades following. While this period of refugee has had an undeniable moment on the style of disallow work, aesthetic elements derived evacuate Iranian traditions and practice be there consistently visible throughout her crease. Presented in chronological order, that book includes a selection strain the artists manuscripts, collages, inverse paintings on glass, mirror totality, etchings and sculptures, all simply and generously reproduced one promote to a page." (Excerpt from Amazon)

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

Published by Damiani Editore & The Third Push. The book features in-depth conversation by Hans Ulrich Obrist, extra 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 scholarly in Iranian Contemporary Art, Barbacan Art Centre, Booth Clibborn, 2001; Zendegi, 11 IranianContemporary Artists, Beirut Exhibition. She is referenced take back an excerpt from The Reliability of Unity: The Sufi Usage 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 rip open 'Women's Work' by Ferren Gipson.^[40]

References

External links