LONDON.- International auction house Bonhams is to hold a Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art sale in London on Wednesday 27 April, featuring some of Iran’s most prominent contemporary artists.

Farhad Moshiri
One of the highlights is We the Roses by Farhad Moshiri, Iran’s best-known contemporary artist. It is estimated at £100,000-150,000. This unique work features a combination of knives, sequins, embroidery and a self-portrait composition. Known for his ‘satirical kitsch’ style, Moshiri subverts mass culture using commercial imagery. One of Moshiri’s works sold for $1million at the Bonhams Dubai sale in 2008, making him the world’s highest-selling Iranian contemporary artist.

Charles Hossein Zenderoudi
The large and exquisite DJE-DJA-DJOU, a 1970s work painted by Iranian artist Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, is estimated to sell for £100,000-150,000. Zenderoudi is described by Bonhams Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art specialist, Nima Sagharchi, as ‘the father of the Iranian neo-traditionalist movement’.

Born in Tehran, Zenderoudi moved to Paris in 1961 where he met manyof the artists working there at the time, including Alberto Giacometti and Lucio Fontana.1963 marked the turning point in Hossein’s career, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York bought one of his drawings. Following MoMA’s acquisition, museums across the world followed suit. His work is now owned by the British Museum, the Centre Pompidou and Copenhagen’s Staten museum, among many others.

Hussein Bicar
Meanwhile Nubian House, the largest work ever to come to auction by Hussein Bicar, a pioneering Egyptian artist, illustrator, painter and poet, is estimated at £70,000- £100,000. He began his career as an illustrator for Akhbar El Yom, an Egyptian weekly newspaper. He soon became known for blurring the line between journalistic illustration and fine art. He is well-known in Egypt not only as an artist, but as a critic, educator, and talented musician.

Manoucher Yektai
Bonhams will also offer Manoucher Yektai’s Reclining Figure for an estimated £60,000-100,000. This monumental reclining nude comes to auction after another piece by the same artist, Portrait of Iris Clert, broke a world record for an Iranian master at Bonhams in October 2015.

Tehran-born, Yektai was both a traditional Persian poet and a radical American modernist. He studied in Paris under Amédée Ozenfant, and arrived in New York in 1947. He soon became influenced by the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, and was exhibited alongside works by Rothko, De Kooning, Newman and Kline. In the 1970s, Yektai returned to figurative painting, and the spectacular Reclining Figure is an example of this later period of his work.