Parviz Tanavoli Retrospective at the Davis Collection, MA
The first comprehensive retrospective at a US museum of work by the ‘father of modern Iranian sculpture’, Parviz Tanavoli, is to be held at The Davis Collection at Wellesley College, MA, 10 February – 7 June 2015.
The artist, a renowned carpet collector, scholar and author of many books on the subject of Iranian weaving and material culture is best known as a sculptor, often working with ancient Iranian motifs. In recent years his work has become widely recognised and exhibited. His expansive oeuvre includes painting, printmaking, ceramics, rugs, and jewellery, although no carpets feature due to the US embargo on Iranian textiles.
Davis Museum. Parviz Tanavoli, Heech Lovers (with the artist). Photo by John Gordon
Based in Tehran and Vancouver, Tanavoli has many long running, on-going projects. Heech, is one of these; an abstract, philosophical concept which encapsulates multiple three dimensional explorations of the Farsi calligraphic script for ‘nothingness’. “Heech is not nothing. It has a body, a shape, but also a meaning behind it”, he explains. Pieces from this body of work are in the collections of many private collections and major international institutions, including the British Museum.
A fully illustrated publication accompanies the show, which is the first to be staged with the support of the The Maryam and Edward Eisler/Goldman Sachs Gives Fund on Art and Visual Culture in the Near, Middle, and Far East. Established in 2014, the fund provides across-disciplinary platform for research, exhibitions, and scholarship on art and visual culture in the Near, Middle, and Far East and supports programming that draws heavily on the resources of the Davis Museum and Wellesley College Art Department.
Parviz Tanavoli, The Poet, 1973. Bronze. Collection of the artist. Photograph- John Gordon
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