Exhibitions

1953 Iran American Society, Tehran

1955 German Cultural Center, Tehran

1956 Gallery Portonuovo, Rome

1956 Bruecke Art Gallery, Duesseldorf

1956 Stenzel Gallery, Munich

1957 Gallery Schneider, Rome

1958 XXIX° Biennal in Venice

1959 Gallery Trastevere

1960 II° Art Biennal in Tehran

1960 XXX° Biennal in Venice

1960 Deutscher Buecherbund, Munich

1960 Maerkisches Museum, Withen, Germany

1961 Gallery Numeo, Rome

1962 Gallery Numeo, Milan

1962 III° Art Biennal Tehran

1962 Sao Paolo International Biennial, Brasile

1962 Gallery Redfern, London

1962 Pistoia Museum - "A Hunred of Abstract Artists"

1963 IV°Biennal in San Marino - "Oltre l'informale"

1964 Pittsburg Museum of the Carnegie Institute, USA

1964 The MOMA di New York purchases a piece of Vaziri for it's collection.

1965 Gallery Saba, Rome

1967 Gallery Seyhoun, Tehran

1969 Shiraz Art Festival, Iran

1971 Exposition "Transitional Forms" at the Iran American Society, Tehran

1971 International Art Festival in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France

1972 Exposition at the Tyler Art School, Rome

1973 Gallery Seyhoun 10 years Mohsen Vaziri, Tehran

1973 Keyhan International, Tehran

1974 Gallery Litho, Tehran

1975 Retrospective (1953-1974), Gallery Takhte-Jamshid, Tehran

1975 Gallery Seyhoun, Exposition of "Pardiss", Tehran

1977 Exposition at the Goethe Institute in Tehran

1977 Gallery Karteh, Tehran

1977 Museum o Contemporany Art

1978 International Art Fair in Fiera Internazionale di Basel

1984 Retrospective (1953-1983), Khaneye-Sabz Gallery, Tehran

1985 Italian Intitute of Culture, Tehran

1993 Gallery Barg, Tehran

2003 Gallery Seyhoun "Works from 1947-2003", Tehran

2004 Fourth exhibition Pioneers of Iranian Modern Art: Mohsen Vasiri Moghaddam held at the Thran Museum of Contemporany Art."Pioneers of Iranian Modern Art, Mohsen Vasiri"

Achievements

1958 - Bronze Medal "Via Margutta", International Art Association

1958 - Second Prize San Vito Romano

1958 - Gold Medal at the Biennal in Tehran

1959 - Diploma of Honor and Art Prize of the Italian Prime Minister Segni on the occasion of the International Art Competition in Ravenna

1960 - Frist Prize for the painting at the Art Biennal of Tehran

1961 - Gold Medal in occasion of the International Art Competition "Small Europe", Sassoferrato, Ancona

1962 - First Prize, Gold Medal and special Citation at the Art Biennal in Tehran

1968 - Annual Scholarship for the "Citè des Arts" in Parigi, Ministry of Arts and Culture

2006 - "Personaggio Europeo 2006" Prize from the City of Rome

The Position of Mohsen Vasiri in the Global Scope of Contemporary Art

Laura Turco Liveri

The following critique was written in Italian by Ms. Liveri on the occasion of the 2003 retrospective of the works of Mohsen Vasiri at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and was published in the exhibition catalogue. The translation is by Simindokht Dehghani.

Drawing lines or words in the sand, is on a smaller scale akin to imitating God who inscribes his thoughts in and on the earth, and the earth from within its depths, transfers these thoughts via organic vibrations to the roots of plants, to the earth upon which fauna walk and to the water in which they live. With the modesty of the insignificance of man, the gesture in sand that characterizes the beginning and the imprimatur of a substantial part of the work of Vasiri, becomes an expression of the artist’s need to be connected to the organic whole, to the cyclical character of life and to give and take from this cycle.

The hand’s contact with the earth, with the sand, transports us to our roots – to water, to the sea – and digs deeper with more pressure, with the removal of material which leaves a void, an aperture on the ground which produces humus, temper and perhaps also energy. This is what we must see and seek in Vasiri’s work: a second plane of perspective on a scene on the surface of a tableau. This is the earth’s depth for it is from this surface that the contact of the artist’s hand with the sand takes place and we too must grasp that which has been communicated to us – the sense of touch, the sense of exchange, the renewed glorification of life and the harmony with all that life is capable of.

With his gestures, Vasiri considers acceptable the great, energetic and creative power of painting, a power he had previously felt within himself over the feeling and dimension of humanity; he prefers opening up to others and communicating with them instead of magnifying himself and his ego. This has been the reason behind his limitation as an artist, and is in fact a mistake for an artistic life which does not belong to him and never has but instead presents a choice to research himself, a choice which he has always emphasized and continues with bravery.

That which has helped place this limitation upon him, has been someone, something, perhaps his own character, his sensibility, his curiosity as a researcher: instead of building panoramic blocks of energy which exert themselves over the viewer and sometimes even with their own voices instill fear within them, in his work, Vasiri introduces himself as a bridge via which the river of energy and communication can be crossed. He does not limit himself to the energy of motion and medium. His work speaks in the language of painting about the professional dimension of the artist and concentrates completely on the high feeling of composition, the mental impression of the work and the choice of synthetic elements. It sends a message (especially the modular compositions of 1963) and is in sync with high international research (for example Jackson Pollock’s murals in the 40’s, the feel of Mark Rothko’s composition, some gestural drawings of Franz Kline and the forms of Arshile Gorky dating to the 30’s).

On the visual plane, the artist has advanced a precise research in and on the sign, almost taking for granted the compositional force of the whole. Thus he denies the gestural character of the informal with the constructed character of grooves, and entrusts to the sign itself the energy to construct the compositional blocks that articulate the whole, from small to large (works of 1960-1963). In contrast, in his search for expressiveness, Vasiri has maintained intact the communicative intensity of his gestural undertaking, a penetration in depth that is also a threshold that can be crossed. As such, it has at its disposal, the entire surface of the painting: rectangular blocks such as doors, windows or thresholds, cut through by the multiple intervention of excavation in the sand, already in itself a voluntary act of recognition and three-dimensional rendering of two levels of depth.

Not the sign as an alphabetic letter of a visual language, in the way it holds true for Guiseppe Capogrossi , but as a permanent reference to the uniqueness of the organic and to the symbolic meaning of gesture in a concrete situation of a living sign which has never been denied.

Therefore Vasiri, in a solitary research which first began on the basis of research on material by Franco Gentilini, then by continuing the research of his second instructor, Totti Shaloya and then due to his own cultural background in Iran which shows his personality and sensibility (for the first time in 1959 in a motion of scratching the sand), finds himself on a unique and strong gestural base but at the same time a symbolic and deeply natural one, pursuing a unique artistic research about signs, color and composition. Then in the late 60’s, this research takes him to abstraction, the abstraction of forms which gradually become clear and then to the next stage, meaning his own personal research to leave behind his knowledge of himself and the world via the tools of art with a metamorphosis from painting to sculpture.

From research on a visual language, the sign is crystallized into form; the gesture becomes closed within undulating contours. In this way, the material itself renders gesture in the wooden modules that articulate the sculptures of the end of the 1960s. Gesture thus emerges from the painting, taking on the consistency of wood – and more rarely of Plexiglas – to assume the responsibility of moving within space, within nature, amongst the people, becoming the protagonist, independent almost of the author. Alternatively, it can be read as the full confirmation of the expressive sum of these works, in the abstract and synthetic sublimation of that expressive language that elaborates in artistic form the continuity and circularity between nature and construction. However, simultaneously that feeling of advancing beyond is not forgotten, a feeling which is unique to the research of an artist and his modules pierced with hinges, so that these sculptures can be altered by the viewers as they please.

If polymorphism and the multidirectional character of these series lead to a kind of interpretation on the basis of parallel planes, it is because it is one of the typical qualities Vasiri’s researches on perspective and composition. This quality connects him with the unique spatial planning of the Italian sculptor Mario Ceroli and also reminds us of the transparent Plexiglas forms of Gino Marotta . The formation of Ceroli’s forms and the symbolic reference of Marotta to nature are qualities which do not belong to the culture and intention of Vasiri who tries to create the concrete realization of mechanical beings having their own unique life and consistency and to articulate the space which they divide and in which they spread themselves geometrically in superimposed and intersecting planes.

In this respect, Vasiri brings to mind the works of Alexander Calder except that Calder moves through space and does not solely rely on human interference with the surroundings. As such, Vasiri’s intention is movement and he takes on details without any hesitation. Details which cut the borders of his sculptural modules, dissect them in different directions and rhythms in order to show, in a visual and physical manner, the lightness and movement of signs and forms. Therefore, even in sculptures lacking modular articulation and shifting borders, there exists a feeling of crossing over and going beyond. This is exactly in contrast to the works of Sinisca in the 70s consisting of steel sculptures in which the metal’s shine conceals a mythical reference.

Although the unprecedented play of moving sculptures was reminiscent of Dadaist mechanism and the futile machines of Marcel Duchamp, however, it goes beyond existentialist intuition, taking on a living manner which is a result of being tactile and constant. This is characteristic of the organic joints of the sculptures which are directly related to and have their deep origins in human motion. It is this origin, which in a subversive manner forms all the works of Vasiri and is easily recognizable by viewers; it sends a perceptive message beyond cultural elaborations which immediately creates a direct relationship between the viewer and the artwork. This feature, on the one hand, gives a normal manner to the high artistic research in everyday life, and on the other, it ultimately gives the viewer an active role and invites him to touch and move every sculpture, dissolving that reverential and distant boundary with the work without reducing its dignity and quality.

All this takes place during the most productive era of Vasiri’s sculptural work (circa 1967-1973). During this time, he cooperates with the international critical debates which for example were witness to the artistic and social commitment of Oiwind Falstrom and his Variable paintings . For Vasiri, who shares a mature and personal commonality with Gentilini’s assault, all this seems just as programmed and spontaneous: works which were concrete and tactile and provided easy access for the viewers in a message intimately facilitated “both for a cobbler and an art critic,” with all the social implications and events which could result from it. Vasiri developed this completely. From the manner that this Iranian artist, despite living in Italy, has placed a profound status both in terms of humanistic and cultural elaboration on his own country on a difference apparent both in his life and works, we conclude that with all this anticipation only today has he given a response to that which everyone has realized and pushes for.

In truth it is due to these reasons that a retrospective of the works Vasiri, is now more than any other time contemporary and necessary because it is one of those historical testimonies – especially this representation of sand and his sculptures – which we are all looking for, especially us Westerners, especially after a method for the reconstitution of a direct relationship with an organic life which we have lost, whether in the field of tradition and culture and thought or because of the alienating and unnatural events of a kind of modernity which Vasiri modestly reveals with his own contribution to the field of artistic research and to himself. Hence, Vasiri’s work should not be seen from a contemporary cultural and artistic point of view but instead, should be related to artistic eras of a world in which Vasiri has chosen as his model in a comparison with his own sensibility and programmed artistic intention.
The Iran-Italy bridge which this artist and his Tehran exhibition offer is one of the many steps which are being taken today for international culture to show the value of documenting the importance of a part of the world which is unknown to so many. A part of the world whose history, tradition, lifestyle and culture makes an important, valuable and serious contribution to further advance thought and sensibility in society.

From the 70s, when sculpture, in particular Italian sculpture flourished, Vasiri, in the creation of an equilibrium between the synthesis and existentiality of the informative conception of art, transfers the results of his previous research onto canvas; he leaves behind the experience of creating sculpture and again pursues linguistic research and tries new paths on which he releases representation from the superfluous. Those same exact forms which protrude from the canvas and turn into sculpture become the common line between three dimensional motion and surface. This surface is ultimately presented in a physical plane used to give direction to forms and then to the colorful areas which gradually cover them. A frontal three dimensional mechanism which had previously been used by the Sicilian sculptor, Pietro Consegra – whose works also concentrates on a spatial relationship of dialogue (the seminars of the 50s) but unlike the works of Vasiri, are cut forms which move from the inside out – is formed from the outside on a two dimensional surface and is held together with screws reminiscent of the joint movements of his previous works.

The memory of this past era compels Vasiri to also transfer this multidirectionalilty onto the canvas and again use the cut forms along with a dramatic transformation in the vibration of color previously nonexistent or at the gamic stage. The dramatic manner which has been added to the current themes provides the artist with an opportunity to place his own work at the service of a very authentic commitment with an emphasis on the ability of analyses and documentary synthesis, thus moving himself nearer to an epic evocation of events based on abstract concepts – war, peace, flight, love. This synthesis and abstract representation are not unlike the formal movements of Leger and Picasso, especially the works of Picasso after the 20s. However, in the works of Vasiri the dreamlike manner of the works of the Spanish artist has been reduced. On the other hand, because Vasiri follows truth, he is more similar to the evocative and sometimes dreamlike lightness of the lines of surrealist artists like Ernst, sometimes Dali, Miro and on some occasions, Matisse.

Combining the works by these historic avant-gardes gives Vasiri the possibility of a higher artistic power for his next flight, a flight which at the end of the 80s, can already be seen in several works, and is then present in his next discovery, meaning his dust like vibrations of chromatic paste and in the necessity to approach truth and the perceptive reality of things. From his studies on the chromatic and tonal variations in 89-90, the next stage of his work takes shape in a series of collages. These are profoundly rhythmic and chromatic. Aesthetically they have a clear expression and conceptually they are modulated based on the principles of Kandinsky – Dot, Line, Plane (1926).

Yet, they are not foreign to and have a relationship with the compositive research of Adrian Hart in the 30s. Thus, Vasiri’s tendency for abstract narration takes shape which is again the result of his native culture and the narration of work which originates in the rhythm and form of Iranian calligraphy; this allows the artist to gain access to various surfaces of expression: linear, lyrical-evocative and musical in the light chromatic variation and flow of watercolor and also by using the expressive force of parallel lines which is the product of the grooves created by the clawing of fingers across the sand in his initial years.

Vasiri has now dedicated himself to small scale sculptures and because we have not yet seen examples of this new era, we must be hopeful that in a tactile experience, which he has researched in many fields, this new attitude will be the curtain call of a strong artistic character. We shall see.
Rome, 2004

Vaziri Website: http://www.vaziri.it