Selected Images

Click on an image below to learn more.

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  Nomadic Tent, 1977
  Nomadic Tent, 1977

  Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
  Iranian, 1922–2019
  Nomadic Tent, 1977
  Felt-tip pen and colored pencil on cut paper and paperboard collage, mounted on paper
  Courtesy of the Estate of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian and Haines Gallery, San Francisco

  In the late 1950s, Monir began traveling throughout Iran, researching craft traditions among the country’s many nomadic communities and collecting artworks and artifacts such as jewelry, weavings, coffeehouse paintings, ceramics, and tents. These were lost to her after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. This series of graphic, collaged sculptures, primarily made in the latter half of the 1970s, consists of abstract interpretations of the nomadic Siah-Chador or “black tents,” a staple architectural structure of many of Iran’s tribal peoples. With their colorful, overlapping shapes that recall the carpets, woven walls, and roofs of the tents, these works give expressive form to a vernacular architecture traditionally produced by women.

  Made in two and three dimensions, these works use the triangular shapes found in tents to evoke the material culture of nomadic life, which had left a deep impression on Monir. She finished making several of these just two years before the Islamic Revolution, foreshadowing her life as an immigrant in New York.

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  Untitled, 1980
  Untitled, 1980

  Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
  Iranian, 1922–2019
  Untitled, 1980
  Felt-tip pen and ink on paper
  Courtesy of the Estate of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian and Haines Gallery, San Francisco

  Produced while Monir was in exile in New York, her calligraphy drawings and collages provided an expressive outlet during a period of trauma and loss. Before the onset of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Monir and her husband Abolbashar left Tehran for a holiday visit to New York. It was not until twenty-six years later that she was able to live and work again in Iran. Having lost everything in the revolution, she was compelled to make small, intimate works in New York with a limited set of portable materials and without craftspeople to assist.

  Her calligraphy drawings, written in Farsi with felt-tip pen and ink, began as a distraction from television news coverage of the Iranian Revolution and the American hostage crisis that followed. Rendered in a dynamic, cursive style, these drawings reflect the flowing arabesques of Persian taʿlīq calligraphy. They also express Monir’s abiding interest in Sufi poetry, which intertwines language and geometry to communicate mystical ideas. A collector of illuminated manuscripts, Monir found inspiration in poets ranging from the thirteenth-century Persian writer Jalāl al-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī to contemporaries such as Etel Adnan and Sohrab Sepehri.

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  A Miniature Rendition, 1983
  A Miniature Rendition, 1983

  Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
  Iranian, 1922–2019
  A Miniature Rendition, 1983
  Mixed media on cardboard
  Courtesy of the Family of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

  Monir’s collages likewise emerged from a time in her life when circumstances in New York required her to be resourceful in her art making. While her calligraphy drawings express a passion for language, her collages reflect her appreciation for various materials, including magazine images and other printed matter, as well as her passion for collecting and combining fragments into wholly unified artworks.

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  Untitled (Flower Drawing), 1988
  Untitled (Flower Drawing), 1988

  Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
  Iranian, 1922–2019
  Untitled (Flower Drawing), 1988
  French pen and ink on paper
  Courtesy of the Family of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

  As in traditional Islamic and Persian imagery, flowers were a constant motif throughout Monir’s life. Inspired by the flora of her childhood garden in Qazvin, Monir’s first flower drawings arose from her keen observation of nature. As she came of age, her sketches developed into an advanced understanding of form, ultimately leading to early artistic recognition. The flowers of her garden in Tehran were the subject of work exhibited at the first Tehran Biennial and at the Venice Biennale, both in 1958.

  These works on view in the exhibition, created in the 1980s, provide insight into the omnipresence of geometry in Monir’s floral compositions. Owing to the mathematical laws of nature, flowers are often connected to sacred geometry as their shapes can conform to hexagonal, pentagonal, or decagonal configurations. Monir’s flower drawings demonstrate both her skill in rendering botanical shapes and her understanding of their fractal patterning.

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  Heartache No. 16, 1998–2000
  Heartache No. 16, 1998–2000

  Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
  Iranian, 1922–2019
  Heartache No. 16, 1998–2000
  Mixed media
  Courtesy of the Family of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

  Following the death of her husband in 1991, Monir, then in her seventies, began a series of architectonic sculptures expressing her desire and longing for her former life in Iran. The autobiographical elements of these “Heartache Boxes” address multiple losses—that of her husband Abolbashar, her home and studio in Iran, the artwork she produced in the first half of her career, her collection of folk art and crafts, and her childhood home in Qazvin. The boxes serve as a form of resistance against forgetting her native language, culture, and history.

  Composed of cut-paper collage, photographs, and an assemblage of materials, each Heartache Box represents a different aspect of Monir’s life, containing both personal and geometric symbols. Fragmented memories adorn the boxes’ decorative interiors like wallpaper, providing a scrapbook-like entry into the artist’s inner life.

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  Untitled Carpet, 2012
  Untitled Carpet, 2012

  Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
  Iranian, 1922–2019
  Untitled Carpet, 2012
  Naturally dyed silk, hand woven in Tabriz
  Courtesy of the Estate of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian and Haines Gallery, San Francisco

  In her early career as a designer in New York, Monir made textile designs for bed linens and fabrics to supplement her income as a fashion illustrator. Much later, in the 1990s, she made designs for carpets and rugs, only a handful of which were produced decades later in Tabriz, a city in northwestern Iran famed for its weaving. This knotted pile carpet was inspired by the work of Qashqai, Turkmen, Lori, Yamut, and Kurdish craftswomen, whose carpets Monir collected in the 1970s.

  Modest in size, Monir’s carpets correspond to the short, narrow rugs produced on looms built for use inside nomadic tents. Their designs further emphasize the influence of the tribal carpets that Monir once collected, which consist of many small patterns in a variety of combinations. An underlying grid of symmetrical diamonds in each of Monir’s carpets serves as a matrix for their dynamic, asymmetrical designs.

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  Untitled (Circles and Squares), 2014
  Untitled (Circles and Squares), 2014

  Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
  Iranian, 1922–2019
  Untitled (Circles and Squares), 2014
  Felt-tip marker and colored pencil on paper
  Gift of the Estate of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian and Haines Gallery, San Francisco, 2019.173

  As independent artworks, Monir’s geometric drawings provide a graphic frame of reference for her use of pattern and repetition in her three-dimensional mirrored works. Later drawings in the exhibition incorporate mirror fragments and pieces of reverse-painted glass, asserting their own objecthood while pointing to Monir’s sculptural practice.

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  Decagon (First Family Series), 2010
  Decagon (First Family Series), 2010

  Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
  Iranian, 1922–2019
  Decagon (First Family Series), 2010
  Mirror and plaster on acrylic and wood
  Courtesy of the Estate of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian and James Cohan, New York

  In 2010, Monir began producing a series of works she called “Families,” each consisting of eight mirrored sculptures: the triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, nonagon, and decagon. Each family is characterized by its unique arrangement of forms, such as the hub-and-spoke pattern of First Family.

  These works reflect influences from classical Islamic ornamentation and the traditional architecture of Sufi shrines and mosques, as well as Western abstraction—all filtered through Monir’s artistic vision. Together, they express the most fundamental principle of Sufism, unity in multiplicity—that is, a variety of forms united within an individual family unit.

  On view in the exhibition, you will see a selection of works drawn from Monir’s first five families created between 2010 and 2014. The formal design of each family becomes increasingly more complex from the first family of sculptures to the last.

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  Untitled (Muqarnas), 2012
  Untitled (Muqarnas), 2012

  Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
  Iranian, 1922–2019
  Untitled (Muqarnas), 2012
  Mirrors, reverse glass painting, and plaster on wood
  Purchase with funds from the Farideh & Al Azadi Foundation, 2019.174

  At ninety years old, Monir continued to experiment with complex new forms, such as the honeycomb shape of Untitled (Muqarnas), named for the ornamental vaulting found in the domed ceilings, niches, and corridors of Islamic architecture. A large work like Muqarnas would have been first produced by the artist as a maquette before being fabricated by master craftspeople under the artist’s close supervision.