Lot 119: BEHJAT SADR (Iran, 1924-2009) Abstract Composition

Behjat Sadr (Iran, 1924-2009)
Abstract Composition
oil on canvas, framed
signed (lower right), executed in 1954
80 x 100cm (31 1/2 x 39 3/8in).
FOOTNOTES
"I always went from the interior to the exterior, from the subjective to the objective in my abstract work. Capturing moments has always been very important to me" – Behjat Sadr

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, Paris
Presented as a gift from the artist to the present owner

Bonhams is delighted to present a seminal work by pioneering abstract artist Behjat Sadr; This abstract composition, painted in 1954, is not only the earliest work by Sadr ever to come to market, but one of the first works the artist executed after her graduation from Tehran Universities Faculty of Fine Arts.

Behjat Sadr is remembered as one of the founding artists of abstract art in Iran, and for some time, one of its sole accomplished protagonists.

Meticulous, erudite and supremely perceptive, her work is characterised by a mastery of the painterly aesthetic, using the visual vocabulary of abstract and gestural art in depiction of colour fields and patterned compositions.

Born in Iran, Sadr was the younger sister of Noṣrat-Allah Amini, the mayor of Tehran during the tense period of Moḥammad Moṣṣadeq's premiership from 1951 to 1953. She was enrolled in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Tehran University in 1948, where she met Sadeq Hedayat, who at the time worked as a librarian, as well as Sohrab Sepehri and many other artists who later became prominent figures in the Iranian art scene. Ḥosayn Zendehrudi (b. 1937), Bahman Moḥaṣṣeṣ (b. 1931), Parviz Tanavoli (b. 1937), and Marco Grigorian were among her friends, it was here that she was tp develop a close friendship with Forough Farrokhzad, who had a profound influence on her later work.

Sadr graduated in 1954 with distinction and was immediately awarded a grant to study in Italy. She left for Rome in 1956 where, upon recommendation of Marco Grigorian, she met with Roberto Melli (1885-1958), who liked her work and became her mentor. In the same year, she attended Roberto Melli Academy, Academia di Belle Arti, and later the Naples Academy of Fine Arts Melli introduced her to several prominent gallery owners and critics, and she was able to hold major exhibitions in Europe. Meanwhile her work, along with the works of a few young Iranians, was selected for inclusion at the Venice Biennale.

In 1958 Behjat married Morteza Hannaneh, a well-known Iranian composer who was living in Italy at the time. Upon graduation they returned back to Tehran, and in 1960 Behjat started teaching at the Faculty of Fine Arts as an associate professor. In 1966 Behjat Sadr travelled to Paris on a sabbatical and became Gustave Singier's assistant. Singier, a Belgian non-figurative painter, was also a teacher at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, and taught Behjat many novel techniques. Inspired and excited, Behjat returned home in 1968 and became the Chair of The Department of Visual Arts at Tehran University. Behjat Sadr was diagnosed with breast cancer in the late 1990s and died of a heart attack at 85 in the South of France.

Sadr's work occupied a unique space in the landscape of twentieth century Iranian art. The dominant trend in the 1950's was movement away from the European inspired academic formalism of the Qajar era and a drive towards the discovery of an indigenous modern aesthetic but one whose key ingredients were popular religious imagery and neo-traditionalist motif's. Sadr's work crushed these parochial boundaries; unconcerned with pursuing a nationalistic artistic agenda she embraced a visual language that was dedicated to expression and technique.

Whilst she would become more adventurous and experimental with her medium over time, the present composition represents Sadr work at is more pure and elemental; executed when she had only just completed her artistic studies, it shows the deft touch of a painter who was highly literate in the application of complex colouring and patterned texture, and whose pursuit of abstraction has left us with of the most revolutionary and original bodies of work in twentieth century Iranian art.