Veteran sculptor, painter Iraj Tanzifi passes away at 85

TEHRAN-The veteran Iranian sculptor, painter, and scholar Iraj Tanzifi passed away on February 9 in Tehran.

The artist was admitted to Tehran’s Khatam-ol-Anbia Hospital last week due to a heart disease, and the doctors found it necessary to perform a heart operation; however, he died before the surgery at the age of 85, ISNA reported.

Born in Gorgan, Golestan Province, Tanzifi studied sculpture and painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran.

After graduation, he worked as a sculptor and painter and also started teaching these fields. For many years, he served as a lecturer at various universities in the country. In 2007, he was a guest professor in Paris for three months. In addition to painting and sculpture, he was also a poet.

During the 1970s, he held several painting exhibitions and made his name known as one of the prominent artists of surrealism in the country.

In the last years of the 1970s, after learning about the Iranian Repoussé and chasing, he created modern sculptures using copper. He is considered the founder of modern sculpture by copper and thus was labeled the “Father of modern sculpture in Iran”.

Repoussé is a metalworking technique in which a malleable metal is shaped by hammering from the reverse side to create a design in low relief. Chasing or embossing is a similar technique in which the piece is hammered on the front side, sinking the metal. The two techniques are often used in conjunction. Many metals can be used for chasing and repoussé work, including gold, silver, copper, and alloys such as steel, bronze, and pewter.

In the 1980s, Tanzifi promoted hyperrealism, a genre of painting and sculpture resembling a high-resolution photograph, in Iran. 

Hyperrealism is considered an advancement of photorealism by the methods used to create the resulting paintings or sculptures.

This artistic trend is in complete contrast with abstract painting, which was the dominant trend of the country's artists in the 1980s and 1990s.

From the 1990s, he focused on painting a series of works inspired by the 1980-1988 war that Iraq imposed on Iran and its psychological effects.

Courtesy of Tehran Times