One of Iran’s most influential and radical visual artists, Behjat Sadr (1924-2009) was one of the first Iranian women artists and professors to develop on an international scale. In 1962, she not only represented Iran at the Bienal de São Paulo but also exhibited at the Tehran Biennale, the Biennale di Venezia, and the Minneapolis Art Institute.

In 1955, after studying in Tehran, she went to Italy to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Leaving academic frames and practice behind, she began to use synthetic industrial paint and to work on the ground. Her “informal abstraction,” as shown in Untitled (1956), unveils her expressionist rage with an irrepressible desire to tackle the depth of the painting; the void or the spirals in which the artist can dwell existentially – with a clear tendency for the color black.

A certain sense of melancholia through exile ties her friendship with significant Iranian poets such as Sohrab Sepehri and Forough Farrokhzad. See the drawing of Farrokhzad’s corpse from 1967, the year of the tragic death of the famous woman poet who introduced Sadr to modern poetry. Sadr also collaborated with influential Italian and French art critics (Giulio Carlo Argan, Roberto Melli, Pierre Restany, Michel Ragon…).

The year 1967 marks Sadr’s enthusiastic experiment with geometric abstraction, Kinetic, and Op Art. As seen in Untitled (1967), she created a unique innovation and optical device: she applied aluminium foil to venetian blinds and then superimposed them vertically onto painted canvas or wood. This mirroring effect, multiplying the painterly patterns, creates a kaleidoscopic image – as a way of welcoming the spectator physically into the work.

In the 1970s, Sadr’s works go beyond strictly geometric strategies. They expand to the hallucinatory visions produced by the effect of black paint on aluminum canvas (as seen in Untitled [1974]), where the paint almost looks like petrol. Hence providing unexpected reflections and mirror effects, these works (such as Untitled [1977]) highlight Sadr’s dazzling power to multiply the lines organically and graphically, in her post-calligraphic vortex.

In the 1980s, while Sadr spent most of her time in Paris, France, her practice focused on a series of collages – or, as she called them, “photo-paintings.” Such return to figurative landscape seems to be a compelling puzzle of her “cut-out” memories and belongings, through her walks and photographs – but also a space of resilience and meditation after exile and the loss of one’s homeland.