Modern Iran and the Avant-Gardes: 1948–78

Modern Iran and the Avant-Gardes, 1948–78 explores how the complex cultural tensions of the nation’s period between 1948 and 1978 led to artistic innovation. As Iran became modern, modernism became distinctly Iranian. Iranian artists created a unique form of modernism that addressed the tension between commitments to innovate and an engagement with traditional Iranian ideas and cultural forms. Heavily illustrated, this publication features thirty artists who worked during the pivotal modernism period and practiced in a range of media from painting and sculpture to printmaking, drawing, and architecture. Featuring an introductory essay by exhibition curator Pantea Haghighi that surveys the range of artistic and political influences on the emergence of Iranian modernisms and a selection of focused essays by scholars and curators Fereshteh Daftari, Davood Madadpoor, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Ali Bakhtiari, Modern Iran and the Avant-Gardes, 1948–78 is a timely addition to the scholarship on both alternate modernis