LONDON.- Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian is one of Iran’s most inspiring artists, whose distinguished career has spanned more than five decades.

Farmanfarmaian was born in Iran and first left her country in the late 1940s to study Art at Parsons Schools of Design in New York, where she later befriended many of her artist contemporaries, including Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Louise Nevelson and Frank Stella.

Her reputation peaked in the 1970s, with major exhibitions in Tehran, Paris and New York. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979 she took refuge in New York, returning to Tehran only in 2000, where, at the age of 84, she still works today.

Her distinct style, conceived in the late 1960s and 1970s, comes from deep ties with her country and her apprenticeship in New York, which sharpened rather than suppressed her sense of cultural identity. Stylistically, she stands out as the only contemporary artist who has explored the use of mirror mosaics, Islamic geometric pattern, and traditional and contemporary reverse-glass painting in her modernist artworks. She combines the random with the designed, order with disorder, and art with craftsmanship.

Farmanfarmaian’s motivation is to establish a non-verbal, visual mode of communication and to discover new forms, colours and trends. In her persistent quest for the new, she reinterprets ancient forms to create a novel modern aesthetic.

Like American sculptress Louise Bourgeois, who has only been celebrated in her later life, the evolution and unfolding of Farmanfarmaian’s powerful and original vision has been fascinating to behold.