The Passing of Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam; Clarity in Black Sands

Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam, designer, painter, sculptor, and master of contemporary art, passed away today, Friday, September 6, at the age of 94 in his home in Rome after a long illness and due to old age. Vaziri Moghaddam was born in 1924 in Tehran. He abandoned his studies in music in his youth and enrolled as a student at the Faculty of Fine Arts in 1944. He wrote about this: "I did not want to become a painter; I dreamed of being a musician, I loved music, and even now when I hear the sound of the violin, I cannot help but cry. My father was cruel; he said he did not want his son to be a musician. When I turned 18, I went to those who taught music. They taught me four strokes of Saba, but I wanted something else, which I did not know what it was... and eventually, Rubik Gregorian taught me what I was looking for without any expectations. But life was difficult; I had to choose between studying and earning a living or my love for music. Thus, I sacrificed my love and became a painter." Vaziri Moghaddam could not continue with music, but music always flowed through his life and art. The colors, compositions, and elements of his works were influenced by music. In 1948, he was among the first graduates of the Faculty of Arts. His professors during this time included Ali Mohammad Heydarian and Mrs. Aminfar (Madame Ashoub), and his contemporaries included painters such as Manocher Sheybani, Mansoureh Hosseini, Soudeh Ganjizadeh, Javad Hamidi, Hossein Kazemi, and Jalil Ziapour. Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam was initially influenced by Impressionist painters and later experimented with Post-Impressionist and Cubist styles. His first exhibition was held in 1952 at the Iran and America Association, and afterward, he went to Italy to continue his studies. Under the supervision of Toti Shaluya, a famous Italian artist, he experienced the world of abstract art and utilized various techniques and materials in his works. As he himself stated, quite by chance in the spring of 1957, while walking and playing on a sandy beach by Lake Castel Gandolfo near Rome, he noticed the sands and their contrast with the light skin of his body and tried to create new compositions on canvas using the sands and the movement of his fingers instead of a brush. Thus, by working with his fingers and setting aside the brush and palette knife, he turned his fingerprints into his signature. After using sand, he expanded his range of experiences and in another series of works, he used color instead of sand to think about light and brightness beneath darkness and color. This period can be considered one of the most successful periods of Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam. His sandy paintings were very well received in Italy and other European countries and were exhibited at the Tehran and Venice Biennales. In the late 1960s, he returned to Tehran and during that time focused on geometric volumes and later gave life to these volumes using nails, creating them in a way that allowed for movement. These large, movable sculptures, named jointed sculptures due to their changing forms and states, constantly altered the space and created a world that Iranian art had not experienced before. These massive sculptures, resembling unknown animals, had the ability to be free at times, gather in one place at others, and sometimes separate. The viewer could change the space at will along with these sculptures and participate in the recreation of forms, creating a new and different world. Vaziri Moghaddam later applied this experience to canvas, creating works with filled and empty spaces and often aggressive forms, which later became known as the collection of Fear and Flight and were recognized as one of his most brilliant working periods. In the 1960s and 70s, by holding numerous exhibitions in Iran and various countries around the world, especially due to his presence in three Venice Biennales, he established his name as one of the most creative and prolific contemporary painters in Iran and received many awards. In recent years, due to vision problems, he worked less. However, he never stopped working and always thought of new ways in painting. An exhibition of Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam's last reliefs was held in July of this year at the Etemad Gallery in Tehran.