Lot 116: BEHJAT SADR (IRANIAN, 1924-2009) Untitled signed ‘Sadr’ (lower right) oil a

BEHJAT SADR (IRANIAN, 1924-2009) Untitled signed ‘Sadr’ (lower right) oil and photocollage on paper 24 7/8 x 32 1/2 in. (63 x 82.5cm.) Executed in 1975

PROVENANCE: The artist’s Estate. ‘I cannot keep quiet, and motion is something that exists in nature. Nature is colour, shape and motion, and I want my works to express these three elements. Shape as shape, colour as colour, and motion as motion. Not a tree whose branches would make a shape, and whose leaves would embody colours, and whose shapes and colours would be set in motion by the wind.’ (The artist, an extract from On Kinetic Works, circa 1967, published in M. Montazami & N. Sadeg, Behdjat Sadr Traces, Paris 2014, p. 82). Arguably the most important and most infuential Modern Iranian female artist of the 20th century, Behjat Sadr’s Aesthetic experimentations reveal her dedication to shape and colour. Projecting her expressionist style in a structural and captivating manner, her works hold testimony to her European modernity, fusing inspiration from both Oriental and her own Iranian visual culture. To experiment with paint, she moved away from the academic style and traditional easel practice, preferring to lay her canvases on the ground in the manner of the American Abstract Expressionist painters or the French Lyrical Abstract artists of her generation. Her works are non-representational canvases and with her recognisable thick and saturated brush strokes of paint, superimposed layer upon layer vertically and horizontally, sometimes manipulated with tools, brushes or even her own hands. She would in fact experiment with material and gesture, as she would remove parts of the swatches of colour in an action she would refer to as ‘negative painting’. An insight into the artist’s practice, Christie’s is delighted to ofer the present work from a period in the artist’s oeuvre executed in the mid and late 1970s. Using sculptural elements that appear to be dispatched in the desert, Sadr creates layers of texture and depth through the use of photo collage to surround, what on closer view, appears to be wooden logs, piled against each other. By spontaneously incorporating these photographic collages into her compositions, she disrupts the abstraction of the background and simultaneously adds her own narrative to the painting. These photographs, often fragments of shots she would take during her walks, were juxtaposed on the paint surface like fragments of difused memories. As in most of her work, nature remains a key theme here, but moving more towards a fgural as opposed to abstract representation of this subject, Sadr intends to tackle notions of solitude and emptiness. This wide vastness of the background ofers a philosophical interpretations on themes of exile and return. With her works and her extraordinary legacy, Behjat Sadr is recognised today as one of the most infuential Abstract and Gestural artists of her generation. Often compared to international artists such as Pierre Soulages or Pierre Alechinsky, Sadr denied any specifc connections with any artists or any style, but is remembered today as undeniably a leading fgure in the shaping of Modern Iranian art.