On Ne Compte Pas Le 25

"As a teenager I often visited the Iran Bastan archaeological museum in Tehran. There were two display cases in the museum showing shirts which warriors wore underneath their armour. These white cotton tunics were completely covered with calligraphic texts and with tables of numerology. I was studying astronomy and that time, and also the various scientific instruments used to measure time and space, such as astrolabes. I was absolutely fascinated. The density of the black graphics on the taut screen of white cotton caused an intense feeling to well-up within me, and made me reflect beyond these visible objects and led me to question the condition of the mankind within the cosmos." Charles Hossein Zenderoudi.

In the mid-1970s Zenderoudi produced a series of works based on Iranian talismanic charts of 19th century and earlier. These paintings are laid out in grid fashion with different coloured squares and numbers, letters and symbols which fill the squares recalling the prayers, codes and incantations on these charts. In so doing, Zenderoudi was revisiting one of his main sources of inspiration from the previous decade, which he recalls a major point of departure for the Saqqakhaneh movement. Both in motif and spirit, this period of Zenderoudi's work shares much with his Saqqakhaneh period of the early 1960s, which is sometimes described as a 'Spiritual Pop Art' (see note for lot 45).