Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam
1924–2018 · Iranian painter, sculptor and professor, pioneer of modern abstraction in Iran
Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam (1924-2018) was an Iranian painter, sculptor and art professor, often described as a pioneer of modern abstraction in his country. His work belongs to the tradition of abstract expressionism.
Born in Tehran, he studied at the University of Tehran and, from 1955 to 1958, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. His first solo exhibition took place in 1952 at the Iran-America Society in Tehran. Between 1959 and 1960 he developed his sand paintings, in which different kinds of sand were applied to canvas, either in their natural state or mixed with colorants. The critic Giulio Carlo Argan and Palma Bucarelli, director of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, took notice of this original approach.
Back in Iran he taught in Tehran until 1978 and wrote two drawing method textbooks. In 1965 the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired one of his works. After returning to Rome in 1985, he explored Persian calligraphy with a minimalist sense of line. An eye disease in 2003 greatly reduced his eyesight, yet he kept working with large splashes of color. In 2017 the Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam Foundation was created in Rome to archive his legacy.