NEW YORK, NY.- artnet Auctions announces their 5th auction dedicated to Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern art: Art in the Middle East: 1950s to the Present. This sale is live for bidding now through July 10.

Since its inaugural sale in February, artnet Auctions’ Middle Eastern department has devoted itself to promoting art from Arab countries and engaged in an important dialogue about the increasing, international prominence of Middle Eastern art.

This sale continues that effort while also including a majority of artists who live and work in the West, thus both highlighting contemporary Middle Eastern art and questioning the East/West duality of artists working in a globalized world.

One highlight of the sale is Pouya Afshar’s Tehran. This drawing is part of the artist’s series Romance With The Crow I Killed and collapses personal and socio-political perspectives of Tehran into a single, story-like timeline. Along it, the viewer glimpses powerful symbols of both Iranian cultural heritage and Western political influences. This dichotomy is reflective of Afshar’s own experience, as he received his education and now works as an assistant professor in the United States but visited Iran regularly from 2001 to 2014.

Another top lot from the sale is Erol Akyavas’ 1957 Untitled painting. This work is not only from the early years of Akyavas’ career but also the earliest work in the sale. Since the 1950s, only two other works of similar size by the artist have been offered at auction, and both sold for either more than double or triple the current low estimate. This work comes from a private collection in Michigan, where it has remained in private hands since 1960, when the current owner’s aunt and uncle acquired the painting directly from the artist.

The sale also includes two works from photographer Youssef Nabil, after the artist’s Rania, Cairo photograph sold for a record setting 54,000 USD in artnet’s May auction of Middle Eastern art.