Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (1922-2019) was 1 of Iran’s most celebrated and revered visual artists, recognized internationally for her geometric mirror sculptures that mixed the mathematical order and natural beauty of ancient Persian architectural motifs with the kinds and styles of hard-edged, postwar abstraction. The Superior Museum of Art will existing the very first posthumous exhibition of her work in an American museum with Monir Farmanfarmaian: A Mirror Yard (Nov. 18, 2022-April 9, 2023).
The exhibition was impressed by the High’s 2019 acquisition of Farmanfarmaian’s 2012 slice-mirror sculpture Untitled (Muqarnas) (2012) and her 2014 drawing Untitled (Circles and Squares). Muqarnas was obtained with money from the Farideh & Al Azadi Foundation as section of a substantial reward to The Woodruff Arts Heart, of which the Superior is an arts companion, to acquire and existing function by Persian artists.
“Untitled (Murqarnas) is between the most well-liked is effective on view in our collection galleries. We are delighted to current a lot more of Farmanfarmaian’s perform, and in doing so, provide a broader context for being familiar with her inventive procedure and observe,” mentioned Rand Suffolk, the High’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Eco-friendly, Jr., Director.
The High’s Wieland Spouse and children curator of Contemporary and Contemporary Art, Michael Rooks, added, “We are honored to understand Farmanfarmaian’s significance as a singular imaginative pressure by way of this exhibition. For generations of artists in article-revolution Iran, Farmanfarmaian signifies the paradigm of an independent artist whose function was unfettered by the histories and customs of its context but existed in dialogue with present-day artwork techniques across cultures. At the exact same time, her function displays a deep knowledge of and reverence for Iranian tradition.”
The exhibition’s title is borrowed from Farmanfarmaian’s 2007 memoir, co-authored by Zara Houshmand, which evokes the visual splendor of the artist’s mirror-mosaic sculptures. The a lot more than 60 functions on perspective in the exhibition will contain a choice of sculptures, drawings, textiles, and collages spanning four a long time, from 1974 to 2018. Early drawings explore the infinitude of geometrical space and the innumerable feasible versions of geometric pattern, although her collection Nomadic Tents, from the late 1970s, employs distinctive combos of form centered on the triangle. Farmanfarmaian’s Nomadic Tents refer to the nomadic tribes of Iran whom the artist examined in her youth and foreshadow the artist’s diasporic relationship to her homeland subsequent the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
Additionally, the exhibition will element a choice of almost never observed Heartache Packing containers, small-scale assemblages that comprise a poetic visible memoir of the artist’s life at midcareer. Begun after the death of her partner in 1991, the elaborately crafted Heartache Containers are arranged with objects relevant to longing, memory, and dreams. They involve prints, images, and a range of objects that refer to the artist’s lifetime, moments, and occupation, such as miniature photographs of her early get the job done and references to her “misplaced” life in Tehran before the Iranian Revolution.
The exhibition will also consist of a range of the artist’s mirror-mosaic sculptures throughout the arc of her career. Farmanfarmaian’s most effective known sculptures unite fragments of mirror and reverse-glass painting in resplendent mosaic models, employing a 17th-century Persian technique termed aineh-kari. Some of her earliest mosaics were being produced in the shape of mirrored balls, this sort of as Mirror Ball (1974), which demonstrates the countless options for mosaic patterning on a sphere. Farmanfarmaian’s mirrored balls prefigure the artist’s later sculpture, notable for its intricate patterning and complicated type.
Between late functions in the exhibition, Untitled (Muqarnas), from the High’s collection, refers to the honeycombed ceilings in Persian shrines and palaces, when its wing-like types recall the wings of the Faravahar, an ancient Zoroastrian image tied to Persian cultural id. An additional late do the job, titled Gabbeh (2009), capabilities a triangular sample fashioned by overlapping hexagons that serves as the foundation for an irregular combination of colorful polygons, arcs, and diagonals. Its title refers to a form of Persian carpet generated by nomadic weavers. The exhibition also consists of a selection of silk carpets made by Farmanfarmaian.
Concerning 2010 and 2014, Farmanfarmaian generated a sequence of is effective she named “households”-5 groupings of 8 sculptures based mostly on the eight normal polygons in Euclidian geometry. The exhibition will element all 8 geometric styles drawn from several “people.” The variation of sort, sample, and construction in the households will demonstrate the advanced complexity of the artist’s concept whilst much more broadly exhibiting the fluidity of geometry and the essential mathematical rules at the middle of Farmanfarmaian’s practice.
The exhibition will be offered on the 2nd Stage of the High’s Anne Cox Chambers Wing.
About the Artist
Born in Qazvin, Iran, in 1922, Farmanfarmaian examined at the College or university of Fantastic Arts at the University of Tehran in the early 1940s, later touring to New York to even more her training. There she attended Parsons Faculty of Design and style, Cornell University, and the Arts Pupil League. In New York, Farmanfarmaian absorbed the advancement of geometric abstraction and noticed its burgeoning permutations in up to date artwork. Her local community of artist pals and colleagues there incorporated Milton Avery, Alexander Calder, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol and many others. These encounters, combined with her deep knowledge of Iranian arts and crafts, resulted in her individual eyesight for a certainly global modernity.
Adhering to her marriage in 1957, the artist returned to Iran, the place she started to study, accumulate, and protect the classic decorative arts of her dwelling nation. On the other hand, the 1979 Islamic Revolution led Farmanfarmaian and her family members again to New York, wherever they would stay in exile for the up coming 26 a long time. In 2004, Farmanfarmaian moved back to Tehran, reestablishing a studio in which she worked with some of the similar craftspeople she had known in the 1970s.
The artist initially gained substantial consideration in 1958, when she was awarded a gold medal for her get the job done in the Iranian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, primary to exhibitions in Tehran, Paris, and New York. Because then, her perform has been shown at major institutions and in exhibitions globally. Most a short while ago, important retrospective exhibitions of her perform have been introduced at the Sharjah Artwork Foundation, UAE the Irish Museum of Modern-day Art, Dublin the Guggenheim Museum, New York and the Fundação de Serralves, Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto.
Farmanfarmaian’s operate is provided in significant general public collections close to the world which includes the Guggenheim Museum, New York the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, New York Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Museum of Wonderful Arts, Houston the Large Museum of Art, Atlanta the Museum of Present day Art, Tehran Tate Modern, London and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
She is the topic of the monograph Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Cosmic Geometry, edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and is the co-author of her autobiography, A Mirror Backyard garden (Knopf, 2007). In December 2017, the Monir Museum opened in Tehran, the only museum focused to a one woman artist in Iran.
