Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam (Iran, 1924-2018)
Line in the Sand
mixed media with sand on canvas
signed 'M.Vaziri' and dated '2000' (lower right), executed in 2000
100 x 70cm (39 3/8 x 27 9/16in).

Footnotes:

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, Dubai

'Painting is not a reconstruction of objective reality, the artist has to create something that never existed before'
- Mohsen Vaziri

A pioneer of Iranian Modern art, Mohsen Vaziri was born in Tehran in 1924. In 1943, he attended the Faculty of Fine Arts in Tehran. He had his first solo art exhibition at the Iran-America Society in 1952. Vaziri left to Europe in 1955 to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan where he learned about the western modern and contemporary art movements.

In 1956, he had his first exhibition in Italy at the Portonovo Art Gallery in Rome and later that year in Germany at the Die Brucke Gallery in Düsseldorf and the Stenzel Gallery in Munich. In 1957, Mohsen Vaziri's artistic career took a turning as he moved away from figurative painting into non-objective or abstract art. He attended Italian artist Toti Scialoja's classes at the Academy. It was during those six months that Vaziri began exercising the depth of his imagination and experimenting with the use of materials, space, form and composition.

This monumental work from the sand paintings series was conceived in 1959. Vaziri focused on working with sand for four years using different types of sands and applying them on canvas mixed with colour or in their natural state. While seeking for his individual style, in the spring of 1959 he found his source of inspiration on the shores of Lake Albano. The traces of his hands in the sand caught his attention and his childhood memories by the sea came flooding back. He went back to Rome and began experimenting playfully with sand and transferring the patterns onto primed canvases, which lead him to create his most powerful and ground-breaking works.

He successfully evolved a richly emotive expressive style through colour, space and form. This series of works grabbed the attention of many including some of the most prominent Italian art critics at the time and in 1964 MoMA acquired one of his sand paintings for their permanent collection. He then went on to win several awards and his sand paintings have appeared in several Biennales across the world.
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