Manoucher Yektai (Iranian, b. 1922)

Manoucher Yektai succeeded in elaborating a personal style by distancing himself from the complete abstraction, as he said in his own words “I was a figurative painter”. Yektai captured the present moment and enthralls the viewer in an entrancing universe. He effectively detached his compositions from any spatial and temporal guidelines such as in this piece Untitled, painted in 1956 that depicts a still life. However to Yektai even the simplest of compositions have an aura of sensibility and theatricality that enchants the viewer through an intimacy. In this highly contrasted still life, Yektai portrays a disproportionate table that does not only lack perspective, but through this lack of perspective the viewer is drawn to how he creates the space through brushstrokes alone.

Born in 1921 in Tehran, Manoucher Yektai largely studied art in Paris at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, from 1946 to 1947. Then, he went to the United States of America and joined the very well-known Arts Student League of New York for one year and he then started his career in the 1950’s. During his time in New York, Yektai’s œuvre became clearly influenced by the works of great American artists such as Willem De Kooning (1904-1997) and Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) who remarkably helped him understand the gestural Abstract Expressionist trend.