Parvaneh Etemadi, an experimental painter, passed away on Friday, March 21, 2025, at the age of 78.
According to Artmag.ir, Parvaneh Etemadi was born in 1947. She began painting under Bahman Mohasses and is considered the artist’s only direct student. She entered Tehran Faculty of Fine Arts, but left school two years later.
Parvaneh Etemadi, according to her own words, inherited her taste from Bahman Mohasses and her boldness from Jalal Al-Ahmad. She was outspoken, but outspokenness is only one aspect of her personality.
In the eleventh list of the world’s 500 most influential artists, Parvaneh Etemadi’s name appears along with four other Iranian artists.
The late Parvaneh Etemadi is known for her still life paintings, and more specifically her cement paintings, from the 1960s.
Parvaneh Etemadi’s works are a brilliant part of contemporary Iranian art, known worldwide, and reflect her empiricism and spirit of inquiry.
She taught many students, saying that she tried to teach them artistic “insight” rather than “knowledge.”
She held his first exhibition in 1969 at Qandriz Hall. He also had many solo and group exhibitions in Switzerland, Beijing, Paris, Los Angeles, Vancouver, and New Delhi.
She was an artist who mastered various techniques such as oil paint, cement, colored pencil, drawing, and collage, and used all of these artistic mediums to change his way of working. Creating different textures, using dark colors and deep shadows, and depicting white on white were among the characteristics of her works.
Jalal Al-Ahmad, who was Etemadi’s teacher at school, discovered her artistic talent. Parvaneh Etemadi then learned painting from Bahman Mohasses on Al-Ahmad’s recommendation. This made her Mohasses’s only direct student.
She initially began her professional career by holding an exhibition of abstract works at the Qandriz Hall, then turned to figurative painting, but form remained an important element of her works.
During a period of her professional career, she turned to creating still lifes, and daffodils, pomegranates, apples, and cashews recurred frequently in her works.
A look at Etemadi’s different periods of work shows that she boldly experimented with different methods and approaches to his artistic expression.
In the years following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Parvaneh Etemadi returned to simplified and transformed forms. This time, plants, vases, interior views, and imaginary creatures graced her canvases and papers.
The displacement of objects and modern humans was one of the concepts she tried to reflect in her work. She herself had said that depicting something that is not in its place was in fact her emphasis on the “displacement and dislocation” of objects and humans that are not in their place; such as the sheep’s head that she drew on a white cloth on a table.
Empty spaces and everyday subjects were constant themes in Etemadi’s work. Bouquets of flowers, vases, tin pots, and fish are recurring elements of his works, each time appearing in a different way but with a common approach. These elements were the personal signature of an artist who had been seeking innovation in his work for years.
Parvaneh Etemadi’s works are among the most expensive works by Iranian visual artists. Her “Untitled” painting from 1978 was sold at a Tehran auction for 3 billion and 740 million tomans.
In 2019, Bahman Kiarostami made a documentary about Etemadi’s life called “Parvaneh” which showed aspects of her life, activities, and his unique perspective on contemporary Iranian art and history. The documentary also used archival photographs and films from the artist’s youth, and Parvaneh Etemadi’s name appears at the end of the film alongside the director’s name.
Message from the Deputy Minister of Art for Guidance on the passing of Parvaneh Etemadi
An artist who said goodbye to our world in the first days of nature’s transformation
The Deputy Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance for Artistic Affairs published a text on the occasion of the passing of Parvaneh Etemadi, one of the pioneering and innovative artists in the field of painting.
The text written by Nadereh Rezaei states:
“In the first days of nature’s transformation, Mrs. Parvaneh Etemadi, one of the pioneering, pioneering and innovative artists of the Iranian painting tribe, said goodbye to our world. A respected and reputable artist who, like many of her contemporaries, played an effective role in developing and promoting Iranian culture and art to the world and left behind works that, while having a simple language from the ordinary objects of our lives, created poetic and the most beautiful images.
An artistic, poetic life full of searching and discovering beauty, which resulted in the creation of experimental, different and full of creating different techniques. A path full of brilliant achievements that, in form and content, expressed a different perspective and perspective from the perspective of a painter and was able to introduce the works of this educated artist outside the borders of our beloved Iran.
What remains of Parvaneh Etemadi in the field of painting and this dear artist’s completely different and searching view of contemporary Iranian art and history is the pleasure of watching the outstanding works of an artist who, benefiting from the schools of distinguished artists and masters in the field of painting, created different manifestations of still life. Works inspired by an empiricism and deep understanding that were presented to the eyes of painting enthusiasts with different techniques.
I, for my part, offer my condolences to the family and artistic community of our country on the passing of Parvaneh Etemadi, and I wish her the highest divine degrees in these dear and precious days.
