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Aydin Aghdashloo
آیدین آغداشلو
Aydin Aghdashloo 04 (cropped).jpg
Aghdashloo in 2014
Born (1940-10-30) October 30, 1940 (age 83)
Rasht, Iran
Other names Faramarz Kheybari
Education Tehran University
Occupation
  • Painter
  • art historian
  • art critic
Works
Termination Memories
Falling Angels
Identity: In Praise of Sandro Botticelli
Spouse(s)
(m. 1972; div. 1980)
Firouzeh "Fay" Athari
(m. 1981, divorced)
Children 2, including Tara
Honours Legion of Honour

Aydin Aghdashloo (Persian: آیدین آغداشلو; born October 30, 1940) is an Iranian painter, graphist, art curator, writer, and film critic.

Early life and education

Aydin Aghdashloo, the son of Mohammad-Beik Aghdashloo (Haji Ouf) and Nahid Nakhjevan, was born on October 30, 1940, in the Afakhray neighborhood of Rasht. His father was an Azerbaijani Turk and a member of Azerbaijan Equality Party and his family assumes their surname from the small town of Agdash. After seeing Aydin's talent in painting at school and his hand-made models, Mohammad-Beik took him to Habib Mohammadi, a painter and a teacher from Rasht.

In 1959, at 19, after successfully passing the university entrance examination, he enrolled at Tehran University's School of Fine Arts. In 1967, unable to complete his studies after eight years, he dropped out of college.

Works

In 1975, Aghdashloo held his first individual exhibition at Iran-America Society in Tehran. The exhibited paintings were mostly about floating things, dolls and some works about the Renaissance. Between 1976 and 1979, Aghdashloo helped open and launch Museums Abghineh va Sofalineh, Reza Abbasi Museum and Contemporary Arts in Tehran and also Kerman and Khorram-Abad Museums.

Aghdashloo was the holder and coordinator of several exhibitions after the Iranian Revolution. While none of them were special exhibitions of his works, they played an important role in introducing contemporary Iranian art to the people inside and outside Iran. He took multiple exhibitions from Iran to other countries, including "Iranian Art, since the Past until Today" in China, "Past Iranian Art" in Japan, and the contemporary Iranian paintings with a traditional background sent to Bologna, Italy. Aghdashloo is also a recipient of the Legion of Honour.

Aghdashloo's interest in including surreal spaces in his works and painting floating objects began at his 30 years of age. During the period, his works were of floating objects having a shadow on the ground. In a surrealistic environment, he painted dolls having no faces influenced by Gergeo Deki Riko, and they later became a large part of his series "Years of Fire and Snow". According to him, painting of such faceless dolls helped him say the subconscious suspicious and illusive words in the form of a painting.

After the 1979 revolution and the eight-year war, most of Aghdashloo's works were about memorials and objects proceeding to doom and damage; abandoned huts and views, green wooden rotten windows with broken glasses, old doors with rusted locks, and deadly blades as symbols of missiles hitting the cities; all of them showed the painter's thinking of gradual doom and damage as the passing of hard times. Using Iranian miniature continued in his works and he used every Iranian classic style and space for transferring his subjective concepts about the contemporary world.

Aghdashloo paints most of his works by gouache on canvas.

Aydin Aghdashloo in 2004
Aghdashloo in 2004

Bahram Beyzai writes in a part of his article: "Why shouldn't I be rude and say that if there's a value in copy-painting, the patterns of the previous celebrities of painting and visualizing aren't in our reach; so that as evaluation criteria, they can testify for the level of accomplishment of those masters in copy-painting; but their works, which Aydin has remade, are proof of Aydin's skill in copy-painting. Copy-painting wasn't all of their art, as it's not all of Aydin's. It's Aydin's imagination and time-sighting and death-aware thought that's the final maker of his work. The notches that time has made in the paintings and the oppressions that the cosmos – or man's hand – has inflicted upon them. In Aydin's repaintings, these masters' praise is accompanied by sorrow for their own and their works' mortality."

In a ceremony that was held in the French embassy in Iran on Tuesday, January 12, 2016, Aghdashloo received the Legion of Honour.

His work was also part of August 26 – September 22, 2022 "A Nostalgic Glimpse Into the Recent Art of Iran" at Homa Art Gallery in Tehran.

Personal life

He was previously married to architect Firouzeh "Fay" Athari in 1981. Together they had two children, Takin and Tara Aghdashloo. From 1972 until 1980, his first marriage was to actress Shohreh Aghdashloo (née Vaziri-Tabar), and they did not have children.

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Aydin Aghdashloo para niños

  • List of Iranian painters
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