TEHRAN -- A crowd of visitors flocked to the opening of a sculpture exhibit on Friday, May 7. Seen among them were illustrator Nureddin Zarrinkelk, painter Iran Darrudi, actors Hamid Jebbeli, Parviz Purhosseini, Hedyeh Tehrani and Niki Karimi, and critic Hadi Seif.

Taha Behbahani’s mystic birds drew hundreds of visitors to the exhibit “Taha, Lock, Bird, and Freedom” on its opening day at Tehran’s Shirin Gallery.
Zarrinkelk regarded the sculptures a ‘surprise’, calling them different and unique and said, “One can see the trace of illustrations and paintings in Taha’s sculptures, but what makes his work unique is his usage of calligraphy in them.
“The idea of letters turning into three dimensional objects has always excited me, and when I saw Behbahani creating a sculpture with the help of letters and calligraphy, I was absolutely astonished,” he remarked.
Critic Seif considered his artwork a fresh hope for modern sculpture of Iran.
“The statues act as a bridge connecting the worlds of miniature painting and Iranian mysticism. They both possess a modern nature, and also carry the mark of an oriental painter and sculptor,” he remarked.
A selection of 30 birds is on display in the courtyard of Shirin gallery. In the first hours of the exhibit, 21 sculptures were sold at a total price of one billion rials ($100,000).
The most expensive sculpture “Tree of Lovers” sold for 200 million rials ($20,000).
The exhibit will run until May 19 at the gallery located at No. 145 North Salimi St., off Andarzgu Blvd. in the Farmanieh neighborhood.
Taha Behbahani, painter, sculptor, set designer, television and theater director was born in 1948 in Tehran. He finished high school at Kamalolmolk Art School, and later studied at the Faculty of Dramatic Art at the University of Tehran, graduating in set design for theater, television and cinema.
He has held a number of solo and joint exhibits in Iran and other countries.