Untitled

A pioneer and influential Iranian artist since the 1960s, Bahman Mohasses was a reclusive artist who mingled with only a few peers, constantly fighting his own demons through life, art and poetry. Known for his dreamlike compositions of semi-human, semi-abstracted figures, he was passionate about Antiquity with its concepts of fragments, waste, ruins, but he also explored the art of the Renaissance and reflected upon the themes of Eros and Pathos throughout his art and career. A distressed artist, he burned and destroyed a great number of his paintings, collages, drawings and sculptures, leaving behind only a handful of works. Other works created before the Iranian Revolution were intentionally destroyed by officials as they were said to be decadent and socially provocative.

Growing up in his native town of Lahijan, an area off the Caspian Coast, initially inspired Mohasses to engage with his surroundings, painting birds, fish, fishnets and the sea. In the present work, the artist abandons any form of perspective, and challenges our notions of space and time, choosing to depict the bird not in flight, but with its shaded contours and form as if it were a sculpture itself, immobile within a fixed position. This is very much like the nature of the artist’s disposition, making the present work a unique sentiment of expression of the artist’s personal life that is embedded in his distinctive style of works.