1924-2024: in 2024 we will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam, who passed away in 2018.
One hundred years that mark the life of a man fully devoted to art, who based his identity on painting and perhaps even more so on sculpture.
Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam is one of the most influential Iranian artists of the 20th century, and the celebrations, promoted by the Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam Foundation, will provide an opportunity to disseminate not only his work, but also his values, his artistic sensibility and his contribution to the history of modern art.
The Foundation wishes to dedicate many events to the artist in order to imprint in the memory of even the youngest people the figure of someone who, in his own way, succeeded in changing the course of art in his own country.
The Foundation will dedicate the entire year to the artist by promoting a rich programme with numerous cultural activities in various locations around the world: exhibitions, new publications, screenings, digital initiatives, education, music, and reflections on his artistic career.
This international commemoration will be an opportunity to bring Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam's creations closer to people of different cultures, generations and backgrounds around the world. To get to know the man, not just the artist, from the inside; his powerful, restless personality. A creative mind who devoted his entire life to study, becoming at the same time a painter, sculptor, writer and teacher with a profound knowledge and passion for classical music, which was perhaps his closest friend and companion.
Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam painted thousands of works, experimenting with new techniques, using different languages, always reinventing himself: he was figurative and abstract. He was dominated by a powerful curiosity and an inexhaustible creative fury.
I write these lines as the curator of the centenary project to invite you to explore the narration of this piece of history – it is only right to begin in the town where the artist was born, where his artistic career began by chance.
After years of research and an academic outlook, the Foundation wants to create a rich and refined programme that starts with a touring exhibition involving several Tehran galleries at the same time, and later on tour to other cities in the country.
An important part of the artist's archive material will be exhibited for the first time, from catalogues to letters, from unpublished photos to works that have never been exhibited before, with the aim of simultaneously exhibiting monumental sculptures in parts of the city.
Another major event will be the publication in 2025 of a catalogue that will bring together the entire centenary project with writings and contributions of all kinds, which will testify to the involvement of everyone who took part in this project.
In the same year, we are also planning the publication of a monographic catalogue dedicated to the artist.