2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam, who passed away in 2018. One hundred years that mark the life of a man fully devoted to art, who based his identity on painting and perhaps even more so on sculpture.

Vaziri is one of the most influential Iranian artists of the 20th century, and the celebrations, promoted by the Foundation, will provide an opportunity to disseminate his work, his values, his artistic sensibility and his contribution to the history of modern art.

The Foundation will dedicate the entire year to the artist by promoting a rich programme of cultural activities in various locations around the world: exhibitions, new publications, screenings, digital initiatives, education, music, and reflections on his artistic career.

This international commemoration will be an opportunity to bring Vaziri’s creations closer to people of different cultures, generations and backgrounds around the world. To get to know the manand not just the artist, his powerful, restless personality, a creative mind who devoted his entire life to study, becoming at the same time a painter, sculptor, writer and teacher with a profound knowledge and passion for classical music, which was perhaps his closest friend and companion.

Vaziri painted thousands of works, experimenting with new techniques, using different languages, always reinventing himself: he was figurative and abstract. He was dominated by a powerful curiosity and an inexhaustible creative fury.

I write these lines as the curator of the centenary project to invite you to explore the narration of this piece of history – it is only right to begin in the city where the artist was born, where his artistic career began by chance.

The Foundation wishes to create a rich and refined programme that starts with a touring exhibition involving several Tehran galleries at the same time, and then tour to other cities in the country.

An important part of the artist’s archive material will be exhibited for the first time, from catalogues, letters to unpublished photos and works that have never been exhibited before, with the aim of simultaneously exhibiting monumental sculptures in parts of the city.

Hamoun Vaziri Moghaddam