We’re All Pure & Free
16 Nov. – 03 Dec. 2018
Artists: Seyed Asadollah Shariatpanahi
D’Angers gallery is pleased to announce ‘we are all pure and free’, the second solo exhibition of Seyed Asadollah Shariatpanahi (b. 1938, Iranian). The exhibition will feature 14 oil color paintings on canvas which are recently created. We are all pure and free will open to the public with a reception from 5-8PM on Friday, Nov 16, and will remain on view through Nov 30, 2018, every day from 5-10 PM (except from Saturday).
After getting his diploma in 1960, Shariatpanahi was employed by the ministry of education and became a painting teacher in Semnan high schools in 1963.
In 1965, he entered Faculty of Fine Arts in Tehran University and studied art painting under Morteza Momay’yez, Seyhoon, Behjat Sadr, Vaziri-Moghaddam, and Javad Hamidi who are recognized as pioneers of the visual arts in Iran.
In 1969, when he finished his bachelor study, he returned to his home-town, Semnan, and started his job in the organization of education for Teachers. He also taught art at Center of Intellectual Training for Children and Teenagers, which led to the birth of a new generation of artists who now hold their own spectacular artistic positions.
In early 1990s, after the war ended, when Iranian society was ready to experience the post -revolutionary period in art and culture, Shariatpanahi did not find the society to be motivational and the extreme ideological medium in the society was still governing every aspect of social life.
In 1997, almost after 30 years of graduation from university, when reformists’ period started and huge development in contemporary Iranian art happened by being connected to the world, Shariatpanahi benefited from a relaxation of the rules thus re-started his art paintings and now backed by 30 years’ knowledge from traditional architecture, history of art in the world, as it was one of his lecture courses.
The golden period of his career began after 2000 by entering into his new-found Iranian-modernity paintings. His artwork after 2000, are the scene of the interaction of modernity and the traditional world in such a way that his works include signs of both modernity and modern system of thought along with traditional paradigm of thinking. Shariatpanahi has consciously carried out his role in this historical twist which is carried out by avoiding the conflicts of modern-traditional worlds and creating an Iranian modernity.
Shariatpanahi’s works possess modern features because he detaches himself from his work and studies it as a subject requiring more recognition (separating man). He is also centripetal in the sense that he places his own understanding in the center of his ideology and offers his perception of the notions around him. In some of his recent paintings between 2012-2016, by placing the pictures of his own face into his paintings, he not only does detach himself from the world around him but also parts from his own identity as the subject matter of the painting.
Seyed Asadollah Shariatpahi’s work has been the subject of several solo and group exhibitions. In 2015, his collection of painting was published in Iran in bilingual (Persian-English) called “The Veil of Clarity”.
