LONDON.- A vibrant and exciting international platform for modern and contemporary arts from North Africa, Turkey, the Middle East and Iran in London, Sotheby’s 20th Century Art / Middle East auction on 20 October will once again star highly-sought after masterpieces. The auction will comprise seminal works by the most celebrated artists from the region, from Monir Farmanfarmaian and Ali Banisadr to Mahmoud Mokhtar and Shakir Hassan Al Said. This follows the successful results for Sotheby’s Middle Eastern art sales in April in London, with the first-ever single-owner Modern and Contemporary Iranian sale and the relaunched Contemporary sale achieving seven new artist records.

The auction will offer 56 lots, with a combined pre-sale estimate of £1,594,5002,068,500. Bringing together a treasure-trove of artworks from across continents and cultures, the full catalogue can be viewed online here, with a selection of highlights detailed below.

Prior to the sale, Rose Issa will be in conversation with Dr Venetia Porter of the British Museum, for the launch of Issa’s book ‘Signs of our Times, from Calligraphy to Calligraffiti’ – the first publication to explore the innovative use of words in art by over 40 artists from the Arab world and Iran. The event is open to the public and will take place in the New Bond Street galleries at 2 pm on Sunday, 16 October.

Bahman Mohasses, Untitled (Flute Player), 1965 (est. £140,000-160,000)

Bahman Mohasses, Untitled, 1973 (est. £60,000-80,000)

The sale presents two rare works by painter and poet Bahman Mohasses, a pioneer in the Iranian art world. One of the greatest masters of Iran’s modern era, Mohasses’ works took inspiration from artists including Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore and Alberto Giacometti – alongside myriad influences from theatre, mythology, tragic heroes and cinema – his work forging a unique and distinctive path. However, he felt continually restricted by the cultural constraints of the Iranian mainstream – resulting in a proliferation of isolated characters depicted in his works. In response to the frustration that plagued his career, and echoing his British counterpart Francis Bacon, Mohasses methodically destroyed a large body of his work after publishing an extensive Catalogue Raisonnée.

Untitled comes from his iconic Fish Series, comprising fish nets, the sea and sailors. A humanist and animal lover, his works were often metaphors for the brutality of Iranian society and humanity’s mistreatment of nature. Living in the town of Lahijan, on the Caspian coast, he witnessed at first hand the destructive potential of oil spills and overfishing. An emotionally charged work, the realistic and raw aesthetic of a fish hanging morbidly on a fishing hook encapsulates Mohasses’ rejection of beauty.

Mohasses was fascinated by Greek and Roman mythology, and in Untitled (Flute Player) he depicts a Satyr – the companions of the Dionysus. Half-man, half-satyr, the innocence of the upper-half of the painting is juxtaposed with a potential diabolical spirit. The work echoes the Cubist shapes evident in Picasso’s Flute Players, however in contrast with the Spanish master’s bucolic scenes of celebration, Mohasses portrays the loneliness of the human condition.

Mahmoud Mokhtar, Al Amira (The Princess), 1925-30 (est. £180,000-200,000)
The first marble sculpture to appear by Mahmoud Mokhtar at auction, Al Amira is also an exquisite and rare example of Mokhtar’s depiction of the Egyptian aristocracy of the 1920s. Her frontal pose and stylised visage and folds of the drapery are reminiscent of the landed aristocracy, resulting in one of the most elegant sculptures created by the father of modern Egyptian sculpture. Despite its Art Deco panache, Mokhtar provides us with a glimpse of history of Egypt that has long disappeared.

Like no other artist of his generation and throughout a short life span of forty-one years, Mokhtar was able to change the outlook and the production of modern Egyptian art history. The artist moved to Cairo from the countryside in 1902 and was amongst the first to enroll in the city’s new School of Fine Arts six years later. He famously said, ‘When I was a child, there had been no sculpture and no sculptor in my country for more than seventeen hundred years’, becoming the first Egyptian sculptor to follow the pharaonic tradition of sculpting. His sculptures now form part of Cairo’s architecture, another example of this statue can be found at the Mokhtar Museum in the city.

Ali Banisadr, Creation, 2012 (est. £120,000-150,000)
Born in 1976, the work of internationally acclaimed artist Ali Banisadr is heavily influenced by his childhood experiences as a refugee of the Iran-Iraq war. His intoxicating canvases are dominated by intricate fantastical abstract landscapes that convey something of the chaotic violence he witnessed. Drawing on both Eastern and Western artistic traditions, Banisadr’s work has developed through a prism of art historical references - recalling the complexity of Persian miniatures, the wide-ranging landscapes of the Flemish Old Masters and abstract expressionism. Building on this, Creation is rendered in the rich lavender and grey colours often associated with miniatures from the Shahnameh: The Book of Kings. The auction record for Banisadr was set at a Sotheby's sale in Doha in 2014.

Ayman Baalbaki, Untitled (From the Mulatham series), 2012 (est. £50,000-70,000)
Ayman Baalbaki’s fierce abstract expressionist Mulatham series is his most celebrated and widely collected, with this work an especially rare example as it is one of only two autumnal backgrounds produced by the artist. The depiction of a face wrapped in a kaffiyeh is communicated through determined, expressive brushstrokes, reminiscent of those of Frank Auerbach. An everyday garment, the kaffiyeh is often misread as a reference to Palestinian resistance, and has morphed, through war depiction and extensive media attention, from a traditional utilitarian object into a powerful symbol of struggle and turmoil in the Middle East. Emphasising the powerful visual imagery of his work is the aesthetic beauty of the ravishing colours juxtaposed with floral textiles.

Monir Farmanfarmaian, Variations on Hexagon of Octagon Mirrors, 2005 (est. £120,000-150,000)
Monir Farmanfarmaian’s works have long been met with international acclaim, most recently with her recent retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2015. Farmanfarmain’s oeuvre brings together the decorative elements of Iranian traditional craft with Western abstraction – in playful yet poignant homage to Islamic geometry and the ancient roots of Iranian culture. This timeless yet contemporary work is one of the most exquisite and colourful to appear at auction.

Shakir Hassan Al Said, Boy with a Hat, 1955 (est. £40,000-60,000)
A painter, sculptor and writer, Shakir Hassan Al Said is considered one of Iraq's most innovative and influential artists. This rare work from the 1950s is from the artist’s most iconic period - a year after he had first travelled to Paris and moved towards abstraction and cubism. A seminal portrayal of a boy wearing a traditional Iraqi hat, painted in strikingly vibrant tones, is a strong example of Al Said’s fusion of Expressionism and Cubism with the visual imagery and symbols of his Iraqi heritage.

Manoucher Yektai, Untitled, 1968 (est. £40,000-60,000)
Untitled is an important imposing still-life by Manoucher Yektai. Yektai established himself among the leading artistic lights of New York in the 1950s, mingling with renowned Abstract Expressionists such as Rothko, De Kooning and Pollock. The movement of Action Painting left a strong impression on the artist, reinforcing his Sufi-like appreciation of colour. A gifted poet with little concern for convention, he had a pioneering spirit and was determined to forge his own path. His paintings are testament to this power of colour, visual brilliance and use of paint – as he brought to life a Still Life in a way that was completely his. Indeed, Yektai was the first Iranian to use layered paint and impasto in this way. His paintings have been described as 'sculptural poems', with a profound lyricism running through his bold body of work.

Ahmed Mater, Illumination XIX & XX, 2005 (est. £18,000-25,000)
Ahmed Mater’s Illumination series brings together scientific references, X-Ray film images and religious symbols in order to reveal an essential humanity. Inspired by the process of illumination of religious texts, the Saudi Arabian artist prepares his paper in a traditional way. He also employs some of the characteristic elements of Islamic art: such as the geometric designs and Arabesque motifs found in Medieval Egyptian and Syrian versions of the Qu'ran.

Etel Adnan, Untitled, 1982 (est. £15,000-20,000)
Lebanese painter, poet and essayist Etel Adnan celebrates the immediate beauty of colour. Her works are very rare at auction, and this seminal canvas is the most important to ever appear from her California series. Adnan’s exhibition at the Serpentine’s Sackler gallery in London is open until mid-September, and her artworks also feature in numerous collections, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Mathaf, Doha, Qatar; Royal Jordanian Museum; Tunis Modern Art Museum; Sursock Museum, Beirut; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris. This is one of two