Book on Treasured TMOCA Artworks

The book ‘A Review of Foreign Works in TMOCA’ was unveiled in a ceremony at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art on Tuesday.

A comprehensive source for a number of the treasured collections of foreign artworks kept at the museum, the book published by Aban Publications, contains images and information on the works and their creators, Mehr News Agency reported.

TMOCA has more than 4,000 items that include 19th and 20th century world-class Iranian, European and American paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures, including an impressive collection of artworks by celebrated western artists Andy Warhol, Claude Monet, Alberto Giacometti, Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso and Mark Rothko, among others.

“All the treasured works have been photographed with the best and high-quality images and their complete information is scheduled to be published in five volumes,” director of the museum Majid MollaNorouzi said at the event.

Speaking about the unveiled title compiled by Mehdi Hasani, veteran artist and art researcher, he noted that it is an analytical work on some of the major pieces in the collection.

Hasani, 74, is a graduate of Art Institute of Chicago and Pratt Institute in New York.

“Fortunately, when I was studying in the US in the 1960s, many of the great artists (whose works are in the museum today) lived in New York and I had the chance to meet some of them in person. In the institute where I studied, sometimes they were invited to hold a workshop for us or see our works and comment on them,” Hasani said.

“I was asked (to write the book) and to do it in a way that is also comprehensible for the public and not just art scholars and experts. So I did my best to give a tangible description of the works,” he added.

The book contains a description of the artists’ personal information, artistic education and art movements they were involved in and the explanation of each work separately. Hasani has included his own definition in some parts as well.

  Artworks Currently on Display

A selection of artworks from the treasured collection is currently on display for the public. Launched on March 7, the exhibit will run till June 16 at the museum, located next to Park Laleh, North Karegar Ave.

It comprises 60 artworks; 30 works by great Iranian artists Sohrab Sepehri, Bahman Mohasses, Hossein Zenderoudi, Massoud Arabshahi, Monir Farmanfarmaian, Parviz Tanavoli and Farideh Lashai among others; as well as an equal number by renowned western artists Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock, Paul Gauguin, Wassily Kandinsky, Jasper Johns and Ad Reinhardt among many more. According to the public relations office of the museum, the public has warmly welcomed the exhibition. On average 1,500 people visit the works on a daily basis and 20% of the visitors are foreign guests and tourists.

The highly-valuable works were earlier planned to be showcased in Berlin and Rome; however both exhibits were canceled by the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Reza Salehi Amiri last November due to “ambiguities raised by legal experts” and on the grounds that the matter needed “more investigation.”

Being the biggest collection of western art in the eastern world, it includes works from almost all artistic periods and movements. Of the total works, 1,500 are foreign pieces and the remaining 250 artworks have been created by local contemporary artists. Since the museum space is not suitable for a permanent exhibition, it has been displaying only a few works at a time and for short periods in recent years.