Sales at the Ninth Tehran Auction of Classic and Modern Iranian Art, presenting 80 prominent works, reached 313.7 billion rials ($7.36 million) on Friday at Persian Hotel Azadi with works of Sohrab Sepehri topping the sale.
The highest and lowest estimated values were for works from Siavash Kasraei and Sohrab Sepehri at 300 million rials ($7,000) and 60 billion Rls ($1.4m) respectively.
The auction began with an untitled painting of oil from Parviz Kalantari starting at $57,000 showing a desert landscape from central Iran and sold for $71,000.
A journalist, writer and a painter, Kalantari’s paintings are printed in books for elementary and secondary school students.
The crown jewels of the night were two paintings from the eminent poet and painter Sepehri as the first and third most expensive deals with $1.2 million and $452,000 respectively.
Sepehri’s untitled oil on canvas painting owned by the Golestan family attracted a jaw-dropping bid of $1.21 million as the record holder of the night.
Experts say due to the size and selection of colors, the work is from Sepehri’s exceptional paintings seen so far.
Sepehri’s paintings derived from the artist’s own perspectives have acquired a unique identity of their own that have pushed prices of his works northwards.
Also the third highest bid was another oil-on-canvas painting by the same painter from his semi-abstract landscape collection. The bid for the untitled work of Sepehri began at $238,000 sharp and climbed to $452,000.
In this work he has kept the visual identity as his signature in using reduced colors in a low contrast that gives a dream-like sense to the observer as one views the artwork.
Saqqakhaneh Value
The second and fourth priciest lots at the auction were in the dominance of the Saqqakhaneh Movement artists Hossein Zendehroudi and Mansour Qandriz.
Zendehroudi’s painting “He Havaze, Honesdale” came as the second expensive sale of the night filling the gap between two works by Sepehri in first and third spots.
The oil on canvas painting by Zendehroudi started at $333,000 and was bought for $548,000.
A painter, sculptor and calligrapher, Zendehroudi, 81, is known as the father of Iranian modern art and one of the earliest to bring Arabic calligraphy elements into his paintings. Another title associated with Zendehroudi is the pioneer of Saqqakhaneh Movement.
In the 1950 and 1960s, a new subgenre of Iranian art called the Saqqakhaneh School was pioneered by artists Zenderoudi, Qandriz, Parviz Tanavoli, Faramarz Pilaram, Massoud Arabshahi, Nasser Oveisi, Sadeq Tabrizi and Zhazeh Tabatabai.
Saqqakhaneh School is a movement of neo-traditional modern art in Iran, rooted in a history of coffee-house paintings and Shia Islam visual elements. Saqqakhaneh is a small public area at which water is given to strangers often decorated with symbols and offerings. The artists of this genre re-appropriate the symbolic traditions associated with saqqakhaneh but with a modernist touch.
Coming to the fourth highest bid of the night, the dark oil on sack work of Mansour Qandriz (1936-1966) started to glow. Beginning with $167,000, bidders almost doubled it when it went for $310,000.
Qandriz began painting in his hometown Tabriz focusing on combining traditional elements of Iranian art with forms and concepts of modernistic art.
Classic Sale
In the section for classic artworks, renowned painters like Mohammad Ghaffari, Mahmood Farshchian, Hossein Zanganeh, Abbas Katouzian and Hossein Sheikh were present.
The first in classic sale was an unknown portrait from the master or realistic works in the Qajar era (1786-1925), Mohammad Ghafari (1848-1940) also known as Kamal-ol-Molk.
His centennial oil on canvas painting went under hammer for $167,000, $36,000 shy of the initial $131,000 tag.
His sketches of Naser Al-Din Shah and Mozaffar Al-Din Shah have attended Christie’s auction in London to cement his place in the international market.
But what hit the classic art sale record at the auction was a miniature by Mahmood Farshchian, master miniaturist of Iran.
Named Genesis, a gouache and watercolor on cardboard by Farshchian was taken for $215,000.
The accomplished miniaturist has brought a new dimension to Iranian miniature as he adds the western third dimension to what originally comes in two-dimensional format.
The surprise package of the night was an untitled mix media on cardboard by Hassan Zarrin-Qalam, Iranian calligrapher and painter of the 19th century, created in 1897. Starting at $16,666 the final bidder took it for a whopping $100,000.
Art for Philanthropy
As the last item on the list, a star-shaped mirror work from veteran artist Monir Farmanfarmaian, which was shining on the wall, went under the hammer.
The philanthropist Farmanfarmaian, 95, dedicated her work to hemophilic patients. Starting at $90,000, it went up to $180,000.
Farmanfarmaian’s works combine the traditional technique of glass mosaic and painting with a contemporary aesthetic. The cottage of mirror works inherits Iranian culture while being formed into modern geometrical shapes.
Of the 80 works available, two were pulled out for unknown reasons. ‘Sphere’, a painting by Ali-Akbar Sadeghi and an untitled work by Behjat Sadr were pulled out before the sale started.
Two other works remained unsold as the auction came to a close: a painting by Zendehroudi and a diptych painting by Koorosh Shishegaran.
The auction generated $8 million -- almost twice the amount at the 8th Tehran Auction for Contemporary Works in January.
