Painter Ramezani Creates His Own Anzali

At his latest exhibition, painter Nasser Ramezani, 61, depicts his birthplace Anzali Port in northern Gilan Province, the way he wants it to be.

Ramezani’s second solo painting exhibit in Tehran titled ‘The Gilemard’ (a man from Gilan) and the Sea’ opened at Hepta Art Gallery on Friday, November 4.

The featured paintings are a collection of his works created during a 35-year period. They are inspired by the ethnic elements and characteristics of his city. He rediscovers the vernacular lifestyle and thus journeys back to an older Anzali, ISNA reported.

Writer and film maker Arvin Ilbeygi, 36, who was born in the same Caspian port city, knows what it feels like when a person is gripped by nostalgia for their native place.

On Ramezani’s exhibition, he observes: “This time, the subject matter is influenced by the painter’s objective of what Anzali should look like.

Following the hasty, unruly urban development in the postwar (the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war) years, Anzali took an alien form. But the painter dreams about old times and creates a picture different from what it is. He paints his own Anzali.”

He blots the buildings not to his liking, and brings back the tiled roofs. He sheds the chaotic elements with no place for cars, and the people are packed off to remote corners in the background.

Ilbeygi further says, “Wherever he fancies, he builds a street or a house, plants a tree and grows flowers. This new Anzali is the synthesis of an endless dialogue between reality and imagery, a battle between is and would be, between sufferance, sadness, dark cramped places and brightness, warmth and vast landscapes. These are all what drives the ‘Gilemard’ to the cruel sea and his sweet fantasies.”

In some of Ramezani’s works, the influences of Iranian painter, sculptor and author Hannibal Alkhas (1930-2010), are visible when he makes a direct interpretation of the surrounding reality.

The painter has created poetic paintings of fishermen’s lives. It features some of his impressionist works, but his expressionistic approach is also evident in the dark, emotional figures and spaces. The exhibition is the culmination of his innovative, self-taught technique of finger-painting on wet surface.

  Gilan’s First Gallery

Nasser Ramezani established Gilan’s first painting gallery in 1982 and named it Mirza Kouchak after Mirza Kouchak Khan (1880-1921), a nationalist from Gilan who founded and led a revolutionary movement in Gilan forests.

He has held many solo and group painting exhibits but mostly in Gilan. His first and exhibit in Tehran was held in 1994 at Zarrabi Gallery under the auspices of painter and pioneer of visual arts in Iran Masoumeh Seyhoun (1934-2010) who founded Seyhoun Art Gallery, one of the oldest art galleries in the country.

The current exhibit is open 4-8 pm at Hepta Gallery at No. 3, Nikoushahr Dead-end, Iranshahr Street, Karim Khan Blvd., and will run through November 9.