Tehran City Council to rename streets after sculptor Tanavoli, filmmaker Shahid-Saless
TEHRAN –(Iranart)- The Tehran City Council approved on Sunday to rename two streets after sculptor Parviz Tanavoli and filmmaker Sohrab Shahid-Saless.
Besharat Street off Taleqani Avenue located between Qarani and Ostad Nejatollahi streets will be renamed Sohrab Shahid-Saless, a seminal figure of the Iranian New Wave cinema.
Shahid-Saless left his homeland in the mid-1970s to pursue his career in what was then West Germany, where he made an original lineup of works for cinema and television.
He made numerous films, including “Far From Home”, “Black and White”, “A Simple Event”, “Still Life”, “Utopia”, “Coming of Age”, “Order”, “The Willow Tree”, “Hans – a Young Man in Germany”, “Diary of a Lover”, “Changeling” and “The Long Vacation of Lotte H. Eisner”.
In the early 1990s, he moved to Czechoslovakia after Germany did not allow him to continue his career in the country any longer. He then emigrated to the U.S. and died of cancer in Chicago in 1998 at the age of 54.
The Goethe-Institut London organized a review of his works in a program titled “Sohrab Shahid-Saless: Exiles” during November 2017.
“In meditative but searing images of everyday life, his slow-paced films tell simple stories that speak forcefully to the traumas of homelessness and displacement. They are more urgent than ever today,” the organizers wrote about Shahid-Saless, who called himself a “guest worker” after moving to West Germany.
Mina Street in the Niavaran neighborhood will be renamed for the 83-year-old Parviz Tanavoli, mostly famous for his sculpture series “Heech” (meaning “nil” in Persian).
He is considered one of the pioneers of the Saqqakhaneh School, a neo-traditional style of art that emerged in the 1960s and derives inspiration from Iranian folk art and culture.
The school takes its name from saqqakhaneh, a public drinking place located in the old districts of Iranian cities and Islamic holy sites. Saqqakhanehs are usually embellished with motifs representing people’s traditional beliefs and their enduring feelings about the religious sites.
Tanavoli is also known as an eminent Persian art scholar and has authored a profound collection of books on traditional Iranian arts and industries.
Among the books are “Shahsavan Iranian rugs and textiles”, “Persian Flatweaves”, “Bread and Salt, Iranian Tribal Spreads and Salt Bags”, “Locks from Iran: Pre-Islamic to Twentieth Century: Tanavoli Collection”, “European Women in Persian Houses: Western Images in Safavid and Qajar Iran” and “Things and Nothings”.
In his latest book, “Mania for Collecting”, published this August, he tells about his passion for collecting strange and rare objects.
source: Tehran Times