TEHRAN-An untitled painting by Iranian artist Sadegh Tabrizi was sold at the Christie's Paris auction “Collections – The Online Sale” held from February 29 to March 13.

Estimated at EUR 1,500 - EUR 2,500, Tabrizi’s acrylic on canvas, executed circa 1970, realized EUR 2,268, ILNA reported on Saturday.

The artwork was the only one by an Iranian artist among 169 lots presented at the auction that included ancient and modern art, decorative arts and design, as well as savoir-faire and luxury items.

This was the 103rd presence of Tabrizi in international auctions. His works have earlier been presented and sold at Christie's, Sotheby's, and Bonhams among other auctions.

Sadegh Tabrizi (1938-2017) was a pioneering figure in the Saqqahaneh School – an artistic school formed in 1960s Iran. Their style can be described as neo-traditional modern art, combining elements of Iranian folk art and culture, characterized by a heavy use of symbolism. In this way, their work was highly experimental at the time.

Upon the inauguration of the Faculty of Decorative Arts in 1960, which was established to offer complementary courses for high school graduates in arts from Tehran, Tabriz, and Isfahan, Tabrizi joined the students and found himself in the same course along with Mansour Ghandriz, Faramarz Pilaram, Massoud Arabshahi, and Hossein Zenderoudi. This new environment had an extensive library that provided students with a rare opportunity to conduct research on past and present Iranian and world art and to avoid repetition of ideas in their practice. Here, this small group of students devised a sort of intermediary art, which observes principles of modern Western art while employing traditional elements from Iranian art.

Tabrizi and Arabshahi held a joint exhibition of their ceramic works in 1961 at the France Club. Tabrizi expanded the domain of his explorations and, using traditional Iranian motifs and techniques created numerous works in fresh forms. These techniques included tile work, engraving, book illustration, plaster work, collage, painting on old inscriptions, painting on glass, use of mirrors in painting, and use of padlocks, chains, and various objects. These techniques are examples of proposals that the artists offered to the Iranian contemporary art world.  Tabrizi made a juxtaposition of his personal documents – including school workbooks, identification notebooks, school identification cards, certificates, bank notebooks, athletic club cards, and university entrance exam cards – on a panel within a composition decorated with sealing wax and the common inscriptions found on documents and seals. Entitled “Life Workbook,” the work was displayed along with other works inspired by spells and the illustrated pages of books that were shown along with Massoud Arabshahi’s relief works at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, in 1964. 

Tabrizi graduated from university in 1964 and decided to continue for a Master’s degree along with Ghandriz, Pilaram, and Arabshahi. Top students of the Faculty of Fine Arts, including Morteza Momayez, Rouyin Pakbaz, Hadi Hazaveyee, Sirous Malek, and Mohammad Mahalati, who would be considered an opposite camp to the students of the Faculty of Decorative Arts, established a gallery along with Tabrizi, Pilaram, Arabshahi, and Ghandriz. This effort had been previously made by others but had never succeeded. This group of thirteen artists succeeded in gathering many avant-garde artists together at the Iran Auditorium, and in organizing the first well-received exhibition. Activities at the Iran Auditorium reached a point where artists that included Sohrab Sepehri, Bijan Safāri, Marcos Grigorian, Parviz Tanavoli, and Manochehr Sheibani, were invited to hold a group exhibition at the Saderat Bank building in Jomhouri St. Tabrizi’s work was received especially warmly in the first exhibition by spectators and collectors.

Tabrizi’s paintings in the inauguration of the Iran Auditorium are reminiscent of miniature paintings in old books that have been embellished with abstract expressionist lines in black and presented on tanned hide. Azure, white, gold, orange, and turquoise spots can be detected in these compositions, and calligraphic lines can be discovered through meticulous observation. This second period of Tabrizi’s artistic endeavor is presented in a second group exhibition. The third period of his creativity includes collages that are presented in an exhibition with Arabshahi at the University of Tehran. These four artists – Tabrizi, Pilaram, Ghandriz, and Arabshahi – were founders of the first Office of Interior Design in Iran, which was established in 1964.

Another one of Tabrizi’s experiments, a review of ancient Iranian arts, was made in 1963. Copper engraving and the incorporation of antique stones and coins in these engravings mark the fourth period of his artistic experimentation.

Tabrizi did not veer far from his original vision during this period and other periods of his career. These periods have their roots in a single perspective – the depth and structure of which is a fertile area of investigation. He created plaster relief work on panels in the fifth period of his artistic career.

His sixth period of artistic endeavors includes works on pages of old books and inscriptions that sometimes take the form of written prayers and lead to collage elements that appear in the background of paintings. Moving to another period, Tabrizi has only a few works of stained glass using mirrors instead of color on a black background. 

Tabrizi employs miniature painting techniques and incorporates Persian and religious motifs in large-scale paintings which are warmly received by the public. Large-scale works of this kind were mounted on the walls of Nour Auditorium at the Hilton Hotel in 1969 to celebrate 2500 years of Persian history. These works can be considered to constitute the eighth period of Tabrizi’s work. They are mostly images of riders on calm horses facing each other, or of lovers found in Persian paintings re-cast in a fresh form in his work.

Although these works were leisurely produced through different periods, they paved the way for the most intense period of Tabrizi’s career in terms of innovation and quality beginning in 1970. Instead of saturating his work with illumination and page decoration, Tabrizi hints at Persian miniature painting by using inscriptions in the form of broken Nasta’liq to fill the negative space of the paintings. Here he realizes an important innovation that calligraphy can create abstract forms in free compositions. Looking at the suspended calligraphy-based motifs of previous works, Tabrizi comes up with the idea of abstract use of them in individual compositions. 

This is perhaps the most successful period of his career. Inspired by calligraphy, especially broken Nasta’liq as an abstract form on hide in black ink, Tabrizi produces a large number of works. He adopts this approach to reach a seemingly easy method in painting, which is inspired by Persian calligraphy but goes beyond that to reveal itself as a completely abstract and expressive form. Works of this ninth period of Tabrizi’s career were exhibited during a solo exhibition first in 1970 in Paris. 

Interestingly, the artist uses the same style, which has unlimited variation, in large-scale works on rawhide, canvas, and paper that are exhibited in Australia and East Asian countries. This period of Tabrizi’s work can be considered the result of his diverse research and experimentation into both Persian and Western methods and representation. He later transformed this exploration into an “Abstract Expressionism” that displays a graceful fluidity of mind and possesses the same fundamental characteristics that are unique to modern Western art.

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Christie’s auctions span more than 80 art and luxury categories, at price points ranging from $500 to over $100 million. Christie’s has sold 7 of the 10 most important single-owner collections in history, achieved the world record price for an artwork at auction, and launched the first fully on-chain auction platform dedicated to exceptional NFT art.

SS/SAB