Modern Iranian art took shape in Tehran in the 1950s and 1960s. Five Tehran Biennials, held from 1958 to 1966, showed more than 100 Iranian artists to an international audience, and out of them came the Saqqakhaneh movement, named by the critic Karim Emami, which joined the signs and objects of Iranian folk and religious culture to modern painting and sculpture. The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 1977 with a major collection of Western and Iranian art. After the 1979 revolution, which the Met calls a rupture in artistic production, some leading artists worked abroad, and since Christie's first sale in Dubai in 2006, an international auction market for modern and contemporary Iranian art has grown.
This page follows that history in order, names the artists and institutions the sources treat as central, and gives the auction results reported at the time. It is part of our guide to contemporary Iranian and Persian painting.
Key takeaways
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art says five Tehran Biennials held from 1958 to 1966 showed the work of more than 100 Iranian artists, and that Marcos Grigorian helped organize the first.
- The critic Karim Emami named the Saqqakhaneh movement in 1962, according to the Encyclopaedia Iranica, or in 1963, according to the Met and the Asia Society.
- The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism records that Empress Farah Pahlavi inaugurated the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, designed by Kamran Diba, in 1977.
- Christie's first Dubai sale, on 24 May 2006, made $8.5 million, and its sale of 30 April 2008 made $20 million, with Parviz Tanavoli's The Wall (Oh Persepolis) sold for $2.8 million.
- The Asia Society's exhibition Iran Modern, in New York from 6 September 2013 to 5 January 2014, showed more than one hundred works by 26 artists.
Before the modernists
The Asia Society's Iran Modern exhibition text describes Iranian art after the Second World War: in high art, "the dominant movements were academic realism and Safavid revival style miniature painting", while large paintings of religious and epic themes were favoured in popular culture. Abstract art and cubism, when they arrived, "challenged the status quo and initially met with resistance". New art schools opened in the same years. The Encyclopaedia Iranica records that Tehran's School of Decorative Arts for Boys was founded in 1951, and that the Tehran College of Decorative Arts was established in 1961, where students were encouraged to look for local sources, symbols and ornament.
The popular painting of the coffeehouse was part of this background. Our page on coffeehouse painting in Iran explains how modern artists collected and learned from it.
The Tehran Biennials, 1958 to 1966
The Metropolitan Museum of Art essay by Maryam Ekhtiar and Julia Rooney says five Tehran Biennials held from 1958 to 1966 showcased more than 100 Iranian artists "to an international audience", and that Marcos Grigorian helped organize the first. The Encyclopaedia Iranica records that Behjat Sadr won the Royal Grand Prize at the third biennial in 1962, and that Karim Emami dated the "official birth" of the Saqqakhaneh school to the display of Charles Hossein Zenderoudi's canvases at the same biennial.
The Saqqakhaneh movement
A saqqakhaneh is a public water fountain built in memory of the martyrs of the battle of Karbala in 680, who had been denied water. The Met describes its grill-like front, where passers-by left votive items such as flags or locks, and its decoration with candles, beads, ribbons and pages from prayer books. The critic Karim Emami, who lived from 1930 to 2005 according to the Encyclopaedia Iranica, used the word for a group of artists whose work reminded him of these fountains and their votive objects.
The Encyclopaedia Iranica entry by Hamid Keshmirshekan says the name first applied to artists who used existing elements of votive Shi'ite art in modern work, and then more widely to modern Persian painting and sculpture that used traditional decorative elements. It divides the movement into an early period, from 1962 to 1964, and a later one from 1964 onward. There was no manifesto. The Asia Society says the movement "arose from a need to counter the direct imitation of western idioms", and calls it "the first culturally specific modernist group of note".
Two places brought the artists together, according to the Iranica and the Met: the Atelier Kaboud, which Parviz Tanavoli founded in 1960 with support from the Department of Fine Arts, and the College of Decorative Arts, where many of them studied or taught.
Artists of the Saqqakhaneh movement and what the sources say about their work
| Artist |
Main medium |
What the sources say |
Source |
| Charles Hossein Zenderoudi (born 1937) |
Painting |
Talismanic signs, numbers and letters; left for Paris in 1961; later pseudo-scripts |
Encyclopaedia Iranica; Met |
| Parviz Tanavoli (born 1937) |
Sculpture |
Heech sculptures of the word for "nothing", begun in the early 1960s; founder of the Atelier Kaboud |
Met; Encyclopaedia Iranica |
| Faramarz Pilaram |
Painting |
Text as a starting point; later works on script alone. The Iranica gives 1937 to 1983 |
Met; Encyclopaedia Iranica; Asia Society |
| Massoud Arabshahi (born 1935) |
Painting and relief |
Rock carvings, Zoroastrian writings and ancient maps as sources |
Met |
| Mansour Ghandriz |
Painting |
Abstraction drawn from textiles and metalwork; died at the age of thirty |
Met; Encyclopaedia Iranica |
| Sadegh Tabrizi |
Painting |
Household items, Persian painting and coffeehouse paintings as sources |
Met |
| Nasser Oveisi and Zhazeh Tabatabai |
Painting and sculpture |
Figurative forms from Persian painting, up to the Qajar period |
Encyclopaedia Iranica |
Many of the movement's works use writing. Our page on Persian calligraphy in painting covers Zenderoudi, Pilaram and Tanavoli's heech in detail, and the calligrapher-painters of the naqqashi-khat movement who followed.
Marcos Grigorian
Marcos Grigorian, who lived from 1925 to 2007, was an organizer as well as an artist. The Met says he helped organize the first Tehran Biennial and was instrumental in building up the gallery scene, especially the Apadana gallery, founded in 1949. His best-known works are what the Met calls "legendary earthworks": abstract compositions made of parched earth and kahgel, a mixture of straw and clay used to build village houses, fixed directly to the canvas. He also made assemblages of eating utensils and food. The Asia Society notes that these works were made at the same time as American land art and pop art. The University of Michigan adds that Grigorian collected coffeehouse paintings.
Other paths: abstraction and international styles
Saqqakhaneh was one of several directions. The Asia Society's exhibition text names Massoud Arabshahi and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, who explored "the abstract potential of Persian art", Farmanfarmaian through geometric mirror-work. Behjat Sadr made geometric abstractions referring to industrial materials such as blinds and aluminium. Mohsen Vaziri-Moqaddam made geometric sand paintings, Bahman Mohassess painted faceless figures and mythological subjects, and Sohrab Sepehri drew on the desert landscapes of his native Kashan. Our page on Iranian women artists covers Sadr and Farmanfarmaian.
The work also travelled. The Met says the American collector Abby Weed Grey built "one of the largest collections of Iranian modern art outside Iran" in this period. The Encyclopaedia Iranica records that a touring exhibition including Sadr's work introduced American audiences to Iranian modern art in 1962.
The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, in an entry by Alexandra Cubbon, records that Empress Farah Pahlavi inaugurated the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in 1977, after large purchases of art during Iran's oil boom of the 1970s. The architect Kamran Diba designed the building with elements of traditional Persian architecture. The entry says the museum holds a large collection of modern and contemporary Iranian art and one of the most valued collections of modern Western art outside Europe and North America. The Asia Society notes that the museum was "actively acquiring both Iranian and international art" in the 1970s.
An NPR report of 2 December 2015 describes what followed. After the 1979 revolution, the Western art was placed in a vault; for years the museum was closed and later used for other displays. In November 2015 the museum opened an exhibition of 41 works, including paintings by Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, built around the Iranian painter Farideh Lashai, who had died two years earlier. The curator, Faryar Javaherian, told NPR that many of the works had not been shown since the revolution.
After 1979
The Met describes the 1979 revolution as "a rupture in artistic production", and adds that the Saqqakhaneh legacy lasted: several artists of the original group remained active and developed beyond the movement's early style. Some careers continued outside Iran. The Guggenheim Museum says Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian spent 26 years in New York after 1979, then re-established her studio in Iran in 2004. The Met's own label for Parviz Tanavoli describes him as Iranian-Canadian and says he has worked between Iran, the United States and Canada; our page on Persian-Canadian artists takes up that story.
Museums, exhibitions and the market
In 2013 a New York museum surveyed the period. The Asia Society describes its Iran Modern exhibition, in New York from 6 September 2013 to 5 January 2014, as the first major international loan exhibition of Iranian modern art from the 1950s to the 1970s, with more than one hundred works by 26 artists.
The auction market had grown since 2006. The Art Newspaper reported that Christie's first sale in Dubai, on 24 May 2006, offered 127 works and made $8.5 million against an estimate of $5 million. At the fourth Dubai sale, on 30 April 2008, the total reached $20 million, and seven of the top ten lots were by Iranian painters. Parviz Tanavoli's bronze The Wall (Oh Persepolis) of 1975 sold to a phone bidder for $2.8 million against an estimate of $400,000 to $600,000, which the paper called "a world record for any Iranian artist at auction". Charles Hossein Zenderoudi's Tchaar-Bagh sold for $1.6 million, Mohammad Ehsai's He is the Merciful for $1.1 million and Farhad Moshiri's I Love You Until Eternity for $769,000.
These are results from one sale in 2008. Our page on how to buy contemporary Iranian art explains where the work is sold today and what sets its price.
Frequently asked questions
What were the Tehran Biennials?
The Tehran Biennials were five large exhibitions of Iranian art held in Tehran from 1958 to 1966, which showed more than 100 Iranian artists to an international audience, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Marcos Grigorian helped organize the first, and the Saqqakhaneh movement emerged at the third, in 1962.
What is the Saqqakhaneh movement?
The Saqqakhaneh movement is a modern Iranian art movement of the 1960s whose painters and sculptors used the signs and objects of Iranian folk and votive religious art in modern work. The Encyclopaedia Iranica divides it into an early period from 1962 to 1964 and a later one, and notes that it had no manifesto.
Who named the Saqqakhaneh movement?
The critic Karim Emami named the Saqqakhaneh movement, after the public water fountains that commemorate the martyrs of Karbala. The Encyclopaedia Iranica dates his first use of the name to 1962, while the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Asia Society date it to 1963. Emami lived from 1930 to 2005.
Who was Marcos Grigorian?
Marcos Grigorian was an Iranian artist and organizer who lived from 1925 to 2007, helped organize the first Tehran Biennial and built up Tehran's gallery scene. The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes his earthworks, made of parched earth and kahgel, a village building mix of straw and clay, fixed directly to the canvas.
What was the Atelier Kaboud?
The Atelier Kaboud was a Tehran studio and meeting place that Parviz Tanavoli founded in 1960 with support from the Department of Fine Arts, according to the Encyclopaedia Iranica. It became a centre for modernists such as Zenderoudi, Grigorian and Sepehri, and the Met says writers, artists and architects gathered there.
When did the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art open?
The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 1977, inaugurated by Empress Farah Pahlavi, according to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. The architect Kamran Diba designed the building, and the museum holds one of the most valued collections of modern Western art outside Europe and North America, alongside Iranian art.
What happened to the Tehran museum's Western collection after 1979?
The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art placed its Western collection in a vault after the 1979 revolution, according to an NPR report of 2 December 2015. In November 2015 the museum showed 41 works, including paintings by Pollock and Rothko, around the work of the Iranian painter Farideh Lashai.
When did Christie's start selling Iranian art in Dubai?
Christie's started selling modern and contemporary art, including Iranian work, in Dubai on 24 May 2006. The Art Newspaper reported that the first sale offered 127 works and made $8.5 million against an estimate of $5 million, and that 63 percent of registered bidders were new to Christie's.
Which Iranian artwork set a record at Christie's Dubai in 2008?
Parviz Tanavoli's bronze The Wall (Oh Persepolis) of 1975 set a record at Christie's Dubai on 30 April 2008, selling for $2.8 million against an estimate of $400,000 to $600,000. The Art Newspaper called it a world record for any Iranian artist at auction at that time.
What was the Iran Modern exhibition?
Iran Modern was an exhibition at the Asia Society in New York, from 6 September 2013 to 5 January 2014, of more than one hundred works by 26 Iranian artists from the 1950s to the 1970s. The Asia Society called it the first major international loan exhibition of Iranian modern art.
Who collected Iranian modern art in the United States in the 1960s?
Abby Weed Grey, an American collector, built one of the largest collections of Iranian modern art outside Iran in the 1960s and 1970s, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met says her close relationships with many of the artists shaped the collection, and that it raised the visibility of Iranian modern art abroad.
References
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Artists of the Saqqakhana Movement (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History). Maryam Ekhtiar and Julia Rooney, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Published April 2014; Internet Archive copy of 16 December 2024. Accessed 26 September 2026. The five biennials, the meaning of saqqakhaneh, Emami's 1963 dating, the artists, the Atelier Kaboud, Grigorian, Abby Weed Grey and the 1979 rupture.
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SAQQA-KANA ii. School of Art (English: saqqakhaneh, a public water fountain). Hamid Keshmirshekan, Encyclopaedia Iranica. Published 15 August 2009; Internet Archive copy of 25 May 2025. Accessed 26 September 2026. Emami's 1962 dating and his dates, the definition and periods of the movement, the artists, the Atelier Kaboud and the College of Decorative Arts.
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PILARAM, FARAMARZ. Encyclopaedia Iranica. Published 1 August 2014; Internet Archive copy of 25 November 2025. Accessed 26 September 2026. The School of Decorative Arts for Boys founded in 1951 and Pilaram's dates.
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SADR, BEHJAT. Hengameh Fouladvand, Encyclopaedia Iranica. Published 1 January 2000; Internet Archive copy of 23 May 2026. Accessed 26 September 2026. Sadr's Royal Grand Prize at the third biennial in 1962 and the 1962 touring exhibition in the United States.
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Iran Modern. Asia Society Museum. Published 2013. Accessed 26 September 2026. Post-war movements, the aims of Saqqakhaneh, the museum's acquisitions, abstraction and the exhibition's dates and size.
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Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA). Alexandra Cubbon, Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. Published 2019. Accessed 26 September 2026. The 1977 inauguration, the architect and the collection.
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Hidden For Decades, Pollocks, Rothkos And More Go On Display In Iran. NPR, republished by WKAR Public Media. Published 2 December 2015. Accessed 26 September 2026. The vault after 1979 and the 2015 exhibition of 41 works around Farideh Lashai.
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Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Infinite Possibility. Mirror Works and Drawings, 1974 to 2014. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Published 2015. Accessed 26 September 2026. Farmanfarmaian's 26 years in New York and her return to Iran in 2004.
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Parviz Tanavoli, Poet Turning Into Heech. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Undated; Internet Archive copy of 6 March 2026. Accessed 26 September 2026. The description of Tanavoli as Iranian-Canadian, working between Iran, the United States and Canada.
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Naqqashi-ye qahveh-khaneh (coffeehouse painting). Chaeri Lee, in The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin, edited by Keelan Overton, University of Michigan. Published 15 January 2025. Accessed 26 September 2026. Grigorian as a collector of coffeehouse paintings.
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Christie's hails success of "first" Middle East sale. The Art Newspaper. Published 1 July 2006. Accessed 26 September 2026. The first Dubai sale, its 127 works, its total and its new bidders.
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Iranian artists triumph at Christie's Dubai as contemporary market hits its stride. The Art Newspaper. Published 1 June 2008. Accessed 26 September 2026. The 30 April 2008 sale, its total and the prices for Tanavoli, Zenderoudi, Ehsai and Moshiri.
Checked 26 September 2026. If something here is out of date, write to us and we will correct it.
