1943–12.08.2010
Mohammad Ali Taraghijah
Mohammad Ali Taraghijah (1943–2010) gave up engineering for painting and in the early 1980s found his motif: stylised horses that move without touching the ground. In 1967 he won a gold medal at the art competition between Iranian universities, in 1976 he held his first solo exhibition in Tehran, and he later showed his work in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Biography
The gold medal of 1967 came to him before painting was his profession. The competition was a student one, between Iranian universities, and Taraghijah was then still a future engineer.
He was born in 1943 in Tehran. He began to draw as a child. He studied a technical subject and graduated as a mechanical engineer; according to some accounts, in 1968–1970 he worked as an engineer in Kerman, on the edge of the desert. After returning to Tehran he left his technical career and took up painting in earnest. The dates of these early years differ: the prize at the art competition is given sometimes as 1967, sometimes as 1968.
His first solo exhibition took place at the Tehran Gallery in 1976. In 1974 his work had already been shown at the First Tehran International Art Expo, and in 1978 he showed paintings abroad for the first time, at the international art fair Art 9’78 in Basel. Switzerland remained an important place for him: galleries in Yverdon, Zurich, Montreux and Geneva showed his work for decades, beginning in the first half of the 1980s. The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art held exhibitions of his work in 1983 and later, in 1986, 1988, 1989 and 1992.
His recognisable method took shape in the early 1980s. The main motif became abstracted, stylised figures of horses, and beside them roosters, villagers in fairy-tale landscapes, and brown and grey-green backgrounds. The figures in these paintings are not tied to the earth: horses, birds, people and mountains seem to fly. White, according to the explanations given for his painting, stands for God. It seems to me that these pictures are easier to understand through the Eastern fairy tale than through the European tradition of easel painting, even though he exhibited mostly before a European public.
A separate layer of his legacy is formed by the works from the time of the revolution. They are less well known than the later canvases. They are rather direct, unadorned scenes of events; in some of them fragments of newspapers and wall inscriptions are placed on the canvas, repeating the slogans of the time.
By the 1990s exhibitions followed one after another. In 1994 the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art selected his works for its collection and published a catalogue. In 1998 UNICEF chose two of his paintings for its Christmas cards. He was shown in Paris, London, Vienna, Innsbruck, Stuttgart, Florence, Madrid, Lisbon, Casablanca, New York, Washington, Chicago, Mexico City, Tokyo, Delhi and Beijing; by one count, about 115 exhibitions took place in his lifetime. His works appeared at auctions in Dubai and London. The International Museum of 20th Century Arts in the United States (TIMOTCA) chose his paintings to represent the art of Iran. His works are held by the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and the Sharjah Museum of Modern Art.
He worked until his last months. His last exhibition in his lifetime was held in Geneva in 2010. Taraghijah died in Tehran on 12 August 2010. His son Ali also became a painter.
Profile notes