Tehran University Honors Monir Farmanfarmaian

TEHRAN –(Iranart)- N egarestan Garden Museum in Tehran, affiliated to Tehran University, has dedicated a permanent hall for a gallery to nonagenarian artist Monir Farmanfarmaian.

Mosaic artist, illustrator, sketch artist and art collector Farmanfarmaian, 93, will attend the inauguration ceremony of the gallery on December 15, Honaronline reported.

The ceremony will start at 4pm. Majid Sarsangi, cultural deputy of the university, and Farbod Farahi, member of the hall’s managing board, will also be present.

The Monir Farmanfarmaian Hall is on the southern wing of Negarestan Garden Museum. It will  open on Friday with 50 paintings and mirror-works by the renowned artist.

The artworks will be on permanent display. They are abstract geometric works combining traditional Iranian and modernist arts. Farmanfarmaian had entrusted the works to the university and the varsity has dedicated a whole gallery to show his works.

To better organize the ceremony, Negarestan Garden Museum has no public admission on Friday. Hall of Monir Farmanfarmaian will open to the public on December 16.

Farmanfarmaian has a rich body of work in her own style. During her formative years in New York, from 1945 to 1957, she met American painters Milton Avery (1885-1965), Joan Mitchell (1925-1992), Dutch abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), American Sculptor Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), American abstract expressionist Barnett Newman (1905-1970), and later, American pop artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987), among others.

 Later she returned to Iran and developed her art through encounters with traditional craftsmanship, indigenous art forms such as Turkmen jewelry and clothing, coffee house paintings (a popular form of Iranian narrative paintings), and the technique of reverse-glass painting, resulting in a period of artistic discovery that culminated in her commissioned projects in Iran and exhibitions in Europe and the US.