Bahman Mohassess (1931–2010), Behjat Sadr (1924–2009), and Mohsen Vaziri-Moghaddam (1924–2018) stand as three pivotal figures who transformed the landscape of modern Iranian art, situating it within a transnational and cosmopolitan framework—primarily spanning Tehran, Paris, and Rome. These three visionary artists anticipated, as early as the 1960s, the ecological catastrophes of the contemporary era and the far-reaching consequences of petromodernity. Such prescience lends their works a paradoxical, even anachronistic, visual agency. Transcending the conventional oppositions between figuration and abstraction, the local and the global, their art articulates a cosmogonic visual philosophy, grounded in the manifestation of natural elements and the catalysis of metaphysical forces.

Morad Montazami is an art historian, editor and curator. Following his tenure at Tate Modern in London (2014–2019) as Curator of Middle East and North Africa, he founded the Zamân Books & Curating platform, dedicated to transnational studies of modern and contemporary Arab, Asian and African art. He has published numerous essays on artists including Zineb Sedira, Walid Raad, Latif al-Ani, Bahman Mohassess, Michael Rakowitz, Mehdi Moutashar and Behjat Sadr, among others.

He co-curated the exhibition Arab Presences: Modern Art and Decolonisation, Paris 1908–1988, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (2024), as well as Black Sun: Oil and Contemporary Art, at the Villa Medici in Rome (2026–2027). He is currently the Artistic Director of the 16th Dakar Biennale, Senegal (2026), entitled (Anti)Fragility: Arts of Repair and Strategies of Recoil.

Image : Behjat Sadr, Sans titre, huile sur toile, 87 × 170 cm, 1974. Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris © Courtesy Succession Behjat Sadr