Charles Hossein Zenderoudi (Iranian, b. 1937)

Charles Hossein Zenderoudi's interest in letterism developed further in the later 1960s and his focus turned towards the Persian letterform as the sole motif on his canvases. The iconography from his Saqqakhaneh phase fell away - some to be later revisited - and the compositions consisted solely of indecipherable Persian words, superimposed on each other and in variety of scales, deliberately distorted and subverting the rules of calligraphy. Around the turn of the 1970s, Zenderoudi's paintings entered a new phase, and compositions focused on single letters repeated endlessly to create rythmic patterns against a white background. The resulting works are beautiful renditions of the letter, and form the most minimal phase of Zenderoudi's oeuvre.