Jafar Rouhbakhsh (Iranian, 1940-1996)

This is an exceptionally beautiful work by the Iranian artist Jafar Rouhbakhsh painted with a vibrant interplay between abstract geometric shapes, scintillating blues, silver, gold, and diverse patterns giving the work a certain luminosity. His attention to delicate lines and bold colours constitute his intuitive and philosophical experimentation with metaphysics and the designs and aesthetics of Iranian miniatures, glass paintings, carpets and tapestries. Symbolic themes recurring in his works include the sun, fountain of youth, birds, and the tree of life, identified with yellow and gold rectangles overlapping each other. The balanced compositions of lines and squares produce a delicate mass of diverse patterns, hinting towards a Western geometric abstraction yet altered into more familiar forms of the abstract painting of his domestic region.

Rouhbakhsh trained in decorative painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Tehran. In the early 1970s, Rouhbakhsh gained a scholarship in France and worked with Joan Miró in a workshop, while also visiting studios of Chagall and Tàpies, exposing himself to alternative artistic processes including carving, hand-printing and engraving. In 1974, he was honored with an exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris at the invitation of the ‘Fondation Maeght’.