Bahman Mohassess (1 March, 1931 – 28 July, 2010) stands as one of the most enigmatic and influential figures of modern Iranian art. Painter, sculptor, and translator, he bridged the cultural divide between Iran and the West, creating a body of work that is both deeply personal and profoundly engaged with universal questions of existence, power, and identity. Nicknamed the “Persian Picasso,” Mohassess’s career was marked by bold experimentation, an uncompromising critical stance, and an enduring engagement with the cultural and political tensions of the twentieth century.¹
Born in Rasht, northern Iran, Mohassess studied at Tehran’s School of Fine Arts before leaving for Rome, where he immersed himself in the artistic ferment of the 1950s and 1960s.² Influenced by Picasso, Giacometti, and Matisse, he absorbed the vocabulary of European modernism while reshaping it with a uniquely Iranian sensibility. Mohassess’s canvases and sculptures often depict grotesque hybrid beings—half-human, half-animal—figures that embody both grandeur and decay.³ His monsters are tragicomic archetypes, reflecting existential anxieties as well as the absurdity of politics and power.
Central to his art is the influence of Western philosophy. A passionate reader of Nietzsche and Sartre, Mohassess infused his work with existentialist themes of alienation, freedom, and absurdity.⁴ He saw art as a confrontation with human vulnerability and mortality, a stage where irony and tragedy coexist. His uncompromising personality mirrored this worldview: sharp in wit, caustic in critique, and often self-destructive. Mohassess was known to destroy paintings and sculptures he found unsatisfactory, leaving only fragments of a larger, irretrievable oeuvre.⁵
Yet Mohassess was not merely a conduit for Western ideas. His work is deeply rooted in Persian cultural memory, though refracted through modernist lenses. He frequently reinterpreted figures from Persian mythology and classical literature, such as Simorgh, Rostam, and Shahnameh heroes, but rendered them monstrous or fractured.⁶ In doing so, he stripped these symbols of idealized heroism, exposing them instead as flawed, vulnerable, or grotesque beings. This reinterpretation served as both homage and critique—placing Persian myth within the modern world’s existential dilemmas while challenging the romantic nationalism often attached to it.
In Iran, Mohassess’s position was ambivalent. Celebrated in the Tehran Biennials of the 1950s and 1960s,⁷ his works were admired in intellectual circles yet criticized for their raw eroticism, grotesque humor, and political undertones. After the 1979 Revolution, social backlash led him to retreat further into exile in Rome, where he lived in semi-seclusion.⁸ His later years were marked by both absence from the Iranian art scene and a growing mythical reputation as an uncompromising outsider.
Despite his isolation, Mohassess’s impact on contemporary Iranian art is enduring. He introduced a modernist vocabulary that fused European avant-garde forms with Iranian myth and memory, paving the way for future generations to engage critically with both tradition and modernity. His grotesque creatures, simultaneously tragic and satirical, continue to resonate as symbols of resistance against conformity, silence, and the abuse of power.
Bahman Mohassess remains a singular voice in Iranian art history: a bridge between East and West, a visionary who reimagined both Persian mythology and European modernism through a skeptical, ironic lens. His art endures as a testament to the courage of radical creation and the necessity of confronting existence in all its beauty and brutality.
- Katouzian, Homa. Iranian Modernism and the Visual Arts, 2009.
- Tehran School of Fine Arts records, 1950s.
- Tavoos Quarterly Journal of Art, “The Grotesque in Mohassess’s Works,” 2006.
- Dabashi, Hamid. Iran: A People Interrupted. London: Verso, 2007.
- Mitra Farahani, Fifi Howls from Happiness (documentary film, 2013).
- Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.). Persian Literature and Mythology. New York: Bibliotheca Persica, 1988.
- Tehran Biennial catalogues, 1958, 1964.
- Milani, Abbas. Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Modernity in Iran. Washington, D.C.: Mage, 2004.
Leave a Reply