Mohsen Vaziri-Moghaddam

Mohsen Vaziri-Moghaddam (1924 – 2018) is acknowledged as a pioneer of Iranian abstractionism and a leading figure in developing modernist approaches and contemporary Iranian art. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. He was also an educator, opening the way for many to-be artists to go beyond the limits of established ways. His "Drawing Method and Painting Guide" (1981) is today's standard academic text.

He is widely recognized for works spanning five decades, from the painterly abstracts of the 1960s to the hard-edged geometry of the sculpted and painted aluminum wall. Vaziri’s work is characterized by a restless experimentation of form through materials deployed in his drawings, sand paintings, optokinetic sculptures, and painted aluminum wall reliefs.

Vaziri Moghaddam’s work was presented at the Venice Biennial several times over his lifetime and acquired by prestigious institutions and collections such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA).