Behjat Sadr (; 29 May 1924 – 10 August 2009) was an Iranian modernist painter whose works have been exhibited in New York, Paris, and Rome. She was known for applying paint with a palette knife to canvas and metallic surfaces, creating compositions characterised by visual rhythm, movement, and geometric forms.
Biography Behjat Sadr was born in Arak, Iran on 29 May 1924. After her studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran, she obtained a scholarship to Italy, where she attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli in Naples.
Soon after arriving in Rome, she abandoned academic painting for an abstract approach. Sadr's first major exhibition was at the Gallery La Bussola in Roma in 1958. She had participated a year before at the twenty-eighth Venice Biennale in 1956 and won the second prize of San Vito Romano. During her years in Rome, her friendship with the Persian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, who had been her student in Tehran, deepened. In Rome, she also met her second husband, the Persian composer, Morteza Hannaneh, whom she married in 1975 and with whom she had her only child, Kakuti (Mitra) Hannaneh.
In 1957, Sadr decided to return to the University of Tehran as a professor, despite opportunities to continue her painting in Rome and Paris. She continued teaching in Tehran for almost 20 years.
Awarded the Royal Grand Prize at theTehran Biennale 1962, she participated in international art fairs like the Venice Biennale and Sao Paulo Biennale and in many personal and group exhibitions. She spent two years in Paris on sabbatical in 1968 and 1975.
In 1980, one year after the Iranian Revolution, Sadr and her daughter moved to Paris.
Style and methods After encountering Art Informel and Abstract expressionism in Italy, Sadr developed all-over compositions made from repeated, curving strokes. During the late 1960s she also explored optical and kinetic effects, including installations made with painted Venetian blinds. For paintings such as the 1974 Untitled held by the Centre Pompidou, she poured industrial paint onto supports placed on the floor and then removed or reshaped it with broad knives. The surrounding unpainted areas helped give her dark abstract forms a more sculptural appearance.
Death and legacy Sadr was diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1980s but continued to paint. She died of a heart attack on 10 August 2009, aged 85, while swimming in Corsica. In several of her writings, she had expressed a wish to die at sea.
Sadr has been described as the first Iranian woman painter of her generation to achieve recognition equal to that of her male contemporaries.Final Week of Pioneers of Iranian Modern Art Persian Journal, (22 August 2004)
In 2006, Sadr was the subject of a documentary film called Behjat Sadr: Time Suspended, directed by Mitra Farahani. This film includes footage of the artist at work, as well as extensive interviews.
The Behjat Sadr Endowment Fund, Fonds de Dotation Behjat Sadr, was established in 2020 to protect and enhance the artist's work.
Solo exhibitions
1957: Il Pincio Gallery, Rome, Italy 1958: La Bussola, Rome, Italy 1963: Borghese Gallery, Tehran, Iran 1967: Seyhoun Gallery, Tehran, Iran 1975: Cyrus Gallery, Paris, France 1977: Iranian-American Cultural Center, Tehran, Iran 1983: Cité internationale des arts, Paris, France 1984: Darial Gallery, Paris, France 1985: Farhang-Sara Cultural Center, Tehran, Iran 1994: Nia cultural Center, Tehran, Iran 2004: Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran, Iran 2008: Golestan Gallery, Tehran, Iran 2008: Frederic Lacroix Gallery, Paris, France 2010: Frederic Lacroix Gallery, Paris France 2018: The Mosaic Rooms, London, UK 2019: Balice Hertling Gallery, Paris, France 2022: Balice Hertling Gallery, Paris, France 2023: "Behjat SADR", IAIA IAIA, New York, USA
Group exhibitions 1956: Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy 1957: Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy 1957: Galleria Il Pincio, Rome, Italy 1962: Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy 1962: The 3rd Tehran Painting Biennale, Tehran, Iran 1962: São Paulo Art Biennale, São Paulo, Brazil 1987: Iranian Contemporary Art: Four Women, Foxley Leach Gallery, Washington DC 1992: Columbia University, New York, USA 1992: Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran, Iran 2002: "Between Word and Image, Modern Iranian Visual Culture", Gray Art Gallery, New York, USA 2013: "Modernités Plurielles de 1905 à 1970", Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, France 2013: "Iran Modern", Asia Society, New York, USA 2014: "Unedited History. Iran 1960-2014", Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, Paris, France 2015: "Unedited History. Iran 1960-2014", MAXXI, Rome, Italy 2021: "Epic Iran", Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK 2023: Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK and Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles, Arles, France
See also List of Iranian women artists
References
External links Official Movie Trailer for Behjat Sadr: Time Suspended (2006) "Playing with reality: The art of Behjat Sadr" interview from The Iranian (2002)