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Lot Essay
“Every time an Iranian builds a house or garden, he surrounds it with a wall; every rug that she weaves carries a wall-like border around the periphery. What mystery lay concealed behind these borders and walls I did not know.” - Parviz Tanavoli (D. Galloway & S. Meshkat, Parviz Tanavoli, Poet in Love, 1970s–2011, Works from the Artists Collection, London 2011).
The Wall and the Script I is a powerful meditation on the wall as both an architectural structure and a repository of cultural memory. Mounted on a stone base, the sculpture rises with an imposing verticality, its interlocking forms recalling the construction of a monumental wall. Bronze lends the work a sense of weight and permanence, while its richly patinated surface and textured modelling retain the immediacy of the artist’s hand. This expressive treatment contrasts with the measured rhythm of the incised forms, creating a tension between the physicality of the material and the precision of the script.
The relief-like treatment of the sculpture recalls the inscribed surfaces of ancient Egyptian and Sumerian monuments, while the stylised signs suggest a visual affinity with cuneiform, Armenian, Aramaic and Persian scripts. Yet they belong entirely to none of these traditions. Instead, Tanavoli constructs a language of his own, drawing on the appearance and authority of ancient writing while freeing it from a fixed linguistic meaning. Dense inscriptions transform the wall into a field of signs, inviting associations with the written traces of earlier civilisations while remaining deliberately enigmatic. The wall therefore ceases to function simply as a barrier or architectural boundary and becomes instead a surface for poetry, memory and imagined communication.
This transformation reflects Tanavoli’s deep engagement with the visual and cultural heritage of Iran. A key figure within the Saqqā-khāneh movement, he drew extensively on the motifs and objects of everyday Iranian culture, from the locks and talismans found in bazaars and shrines to the architectural details of historic buildings. The Walls series grew from this sustained fascination with the physical structures that surrounded him throughout his childhood. As Tanavoli observed, walls were ubiquitous in Iran, from the enclosures of houses and gardens to the decorative borders of Persian carpets. His encounter with the ancient walls of Persepolis was particularly formative: standing before its carved reliefs, he was struck by the sense of connection between his own cultural inheritance and the figures represented upon them.
In The Wall and the Script I, these layers of cultural memory converge. The monumental wall becomes a repository of signs, linking the vernacular world of Iranian homes and carpets to the ancient past of Persepolis, while Tanavoli’s invented script transforms it from an architectural boundary into a site of communication and contemplation.
Born in Tehran in 1937, Parviz Tanavoli is considered one of the pioneers of the Saqqā-khāneh movement that emerged in Iran in the 1960s. Alongside artists including Faramarz Pilaram and Massoud Arabshahi, Tanavoli developed a new visual language rooted in Persian visual culture, literature and spiritual traditions, translated through abstraction, geometry and the sculptural form. After graduating from the Tehran School of Fine Arts in 1955, he continued his studies in Italy under the renowned modernist sculptor Marino Marini, before later attending the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Following his training, Tanavoli devoted himself primarily to sculpture and bronze casting, drawing on Sufi ideas of divine and human love. His work reflects the enduring influence of Persian literary traditions, particularly the poetry of Rumi, Hafez, Omar Khayyam and Saadi Shirazi, whose writings explored themes of mystical and spiritual love.
Tanavoli’s work was the subject of his first major retrospective in the United States at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in 2015. His work is held in prominent public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art; British Museum, London; Tate, London; Museum of Modern Art, Vienna; National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh; Qatar National Museum, Doha; Royal Jordan Museum, Amman and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
The Wall and the Script I is a powerful meditation on the wall as both an architectural structure and a repository of cultural memory. Mounted on a stone base, the sculpture rises with an imposing verticality, its interlocking forms recalling the construction of a monumental wall. Bronze lends the work a sense of weight and permanence, while its richly patinated surface and textured modelling retain the immediacy of the artist’s hand. This expressive treatment contrasts with the measured rhythm of the incised forms, creating a tension between the physicality of the material and the precision of the script.
The relief-like treatment of the sculpture recalls the inscribed surfaces of ancient Egyptian and Sumerian monuments, while the stylised signs suggest a visual affinity with cuneiform, Armenian, Aramaic and Persian scripts. Yet they belong entirely to none of these traditions. Instead, Tanavoli constructs a language of his own, drawing on the appearance and authority of ancient writing while freeing it from a fixed linguistic meaning. Dense inscriptions transform the wall into a field of signs, inviting associations with the written traces of earlier civilisations while remaining deliberately enigmatic. The wall therefore ceases to function simply as a barrier or architectural boundary and becomes instead a surface for poetry, memory and imagined communication.
This transformation reflects Tanavoli’s deep engagement with the visual and cultural heritage of Iran. A key figure within the Saqqā-khāneh movement, he drew extensively on the motifs and objects of everyday Iranian culture, from the locks and talismans found in bazaars and shrines to the architectural details of historic buildings. The Walls series grew from this sustained fascination with the physical structures that surrounded him throughout his childhood. As Tanavoli observed, walls were ubiquitous in Iran, from the enclosures of houses and gardens to the decorative borders of Persian carpets. His encounter with the ancient walls of Persepolis was particularly formative: standing before its carved reliefs, he was struck by the sense of connection between his own cultural inheritance and the figures represented upon them.
In The Wall and the Script I, these layers of cultural memory converge. The monumental wall becomes a repository of signs, linking the vernacular world of Iranian homes and carpets to the ancient past of Persepolis, while Tanavoli’s invented script transforms it from an architectural boundary into a site of communication and contemplation.
Born in Tehran in 1937, Parviz Tanavoli is considered one of the pioneers of the Saqqā-khāneh movement that emerged in Iran in the 1960s. Alongside artists including Faramarz Pilaram and Massoud Arabshahi, Tanavoli developed a new visual language rooted in Persian visual culture, literature and spiritual traditions, translated through abstraction, geometry and the sculptural form. After graduating from the Tehran School of Fine Arts in 1955, he continued his studies in Italy under the renowned modernist sculptor Marino Marini, before later attending the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Following his training, Tanavoli devoted himself primarily to sculpture and bronze casting, drawing on Sufi ideas of divine and human love. His work reflects the enduring influence of Persian literary traditions, particularly the poetry of Rumi, Hafez, Omar Khayyam and Saadi Shirazi, whose writings explored themes of mystical and spiritual love.
Tanavoli’s work was the subject of his first major retrospective in the United States at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in 2015. His work is held in prominent public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art; British Museum, London; Tate, London; Museum of Modern Art, Vienna; National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh; Qatar National Museum, Doha; Royal Jordan Museum, Amman and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.