فارسیNasser Oveisi (born 1934), a painter, printmaker, and potter, is one of the pioneers of the neo-traditionalist movement and the Saqqakhaneh school in Iran. He graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Tehran, with a degree in political science in 1956. He then went to Rome to pursue his artistic education, where he received a diploma in painting, pottery, goldsmithing, and lithography.
He won the award at the Tehran Painters’ Exhibition in his first exhibition of his works. In the following years of his professional life, he had various solo and group exhibitions in Iran and was among the winners of the Third and Fourth Tehran Biennials.
Employment at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a six-year stay in Rome and Madrid provided him with the opportunity to maintain constant contact with international art circles. His works have been exhibited in countries around the world, including Brazil, the United States, Italy, France, and Japan, and have been displayed on gallery walls alongside works by prominent artists such as Picasso, Chagall, and Dali.
During his presence in these arenas, he has also won prestigious awards, such as the Grand Prix at the International Art Exhibition in Monaco. This has made Nasser Oveisi one of the most recognized figures of Iranian modern art in the world.
His name is mentioned in the Encyclopedia of Art (Benzit), published in thirteen volumes in French, and a page in the book “Answer to Art”, which is one of the sources for teaching art history in American high schools and universities, is dedicated to Owais’s engravings of Khayyam’s poems.
In the early period of his works, Ovesi tended towards impressionism, but gradually he tried to combine the indigenous and national characteristics of Iranian art with an expression adapted from Western painting. It was this tendency that placed his name among the painters of the Saqqahane school.
His inspiration comes from Iranian legends and folklore. He is deeply influenced by the painting tradition, Timurid, Seljuk and Qajar tile and pottery designs, and the art of the Qajar period. His attention to the ancient connection between calligraphy and image in Iranian art and the incorporation of elements and rhythms of the calligraphy tradition into the form of modern painting are also prominent features of his works.
Giulio Carlo Argan writes about the relationship between his paintings and literature: “Ovisi’s style is full of a quality that places his works on the verge of poetry and on the border between painting and calligraphy.”
Images of beautiful Iranian women and horses have always been a constant theme in Nasser Oveisi’s paintings; these subjects are depicted not in a representational manner but with a subjective approach and inspired by traditional art.
In his works, the motifs are classified into six categories: abstract, human, animal, plant, geometric. Written. The painter has used motifs such as chamomile, pomegranate, horse, woman, shapes (square, circle, triangle and rhombus), Nastaliq lines and improvisation, objects such as setar in his works. Concepts such as power, tolerance, contentment, fertility, creation, freedom are related.
The exhibition “The Painter Who Paints His Poems” in 2019 at Tehran’s Sohrab Gallery, the exhibition of Nasser Oveissi’s works at Tehran’s Art Center in 2016, the solo exhibition “The Unseen” at Tehran’s Atbin Gallery, and “Nasser Oveissi’s Blues” at Tehran’s Chahar Gallery have been the most important solo exhibitions of Nasser Oveissi’s works in recent years.
Over the years, Ovesi’s works have been exhibited in many of the world’s most important art centers, including the Metropolitan Gallery in Tokyo, Beverly Hills Town Center in Los Angeles, the Johns Hopkins Gallery in Baltimore, and the San Bernardino Museum of Art in California. His works are now housed in museums around the world, and many of them have been sold at numerous auctions.