Ahmad Morshedloo (Iranian, b. 1973)

Proinently featured in Saatchi's recent exhibition Unveilved: New Art from the Middle East, Ahmad Morshedloo is one of Iran's strongest realist painters. His works, featuring the oridinary people around him, explore the alienation between the residents of his native Tehran, especially that between the sexes. In this, among the most powerful of his works on paper, Morshedloo obsessively studies a mulitude of female faces. There is no uniformity- the women are from all walks of life, some conservative than others. The one thing they share in common is their blank gaze into the near distance.