Behdjat Sadr: Traces/ Edited by Morad Montazami, Narmine Sadeg

Monograph exploring the artistic and intellectual heritage of abstract painter and pioneer of the visual arts in Iran Behdjat Sadr. This richly illustrated publication offers a singular testimony, combining personal writings and press cuttings, critical texts and poetic correspondence. Behdjat Sadr is the abstract painter of paradoxical traces, blending luxuriant nature with the sharp-edged industrial world in works that spanned the second half of the 20th century. A pioneer of the visual arts in Iran, she was one of the first women artists and professors to appear on the international biennale scene in the early 1960s. After studying at the faculty of fine arts at the University of Tehran, Iranian artist Behdjat Sadr went to Rome, where she graduated toward abstract painting and informal art. Leaving frames and traditional colours behind, she used synthetic industrial paints that she ran on supports placed on the ground. When she returned to Iran at the end of the 1950s, her experiments with subject and gesture were quickly noticed by Pierre Restany and, later, Michel Ragon. In the 1980s, when she split her time between Paris and Tehran, she notably produced photomontages in an unusual style reminiscent of her painting. Narmine Sadeg

English