Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (Persian: منیر شاهرودی فرمانفرمائیان; 13 January 1922 – 20 April 2019)[1] was an Iranian artist and a collector of traditional folk art.
[5] Farmanfarmaian acquired artistic skills early on in childhood, receiving drawing lessons from a tutor and studying postcard depictions of Western art.
[5] As a fashion illustrator, she held various freelance jobs, working with magazines such as Glamour before being hired by the Bonwit Teller department store, where she made the acquaintance of a young Andy Warhol.
Inspired by the resident culture, she discovered "a fascination with tribal and folk artistic tradition" of her country's history, which "led her to rethink the past and conceive a new path for her art.
Meanwhile, her work was featured at the Iran Pavilion in the 1958 Venice Biennale[10] and held a number of exhibitions in places such as Tehran University (1963), the Iran-America Society (1973), and the Jacques Kaplan/Mario Ravagnan Gallery (1974).
It was a universe unto itself, architecture transformed into performance, all movement and fluid light, all solids fractured and dissolved in brilliance in space, in prayer.
"[17]Aided by the Iranian craftsman, Hajji Ostad Mohammad Navid, she created a number of mosaics and exhibition pieces by cutting mirrors and glass paintings into a multitude of shapes, which she would later reform into constructions which evoked aspects of Sufism and Islamic culture.
Farmanfarmaian participated in the 29th Bienal de São Paulo (2010); the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (2009); and the Venice Biennale (1958, 1966 and 2009).
From the enchanted basement storeroom where she played as a girl to the penthouse high above New York City where she would someday live, this is the delightful and inspiring story of her life as an artist, a wife and mother, a collector, and an Iranian.
These twenty-five intimate small-scale sculptures were primarily made after the loss of her husband, and draw inspiration from all the places, faces and paraphernalia that at some stage in her history were associated with a happy family life."
Presented in chronological order, this book includes a selection of the artists manuscripts, collages, reverse paintings on glass, mirror works, etchings and sculptures, all clearly and generously reproduced one to a page."
The book features in-depth interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and critical essays by Nader Ardalan, Media Farzin and Eleanor Sims, tributes by Farmanfarmaian's friends Etel Adnan, Siah Armajani, caraballo-farman, Golnaz Fathi, Hadi Hazavei, Susan Hefuna, Aziz Isham, Rose Issa, Faryar Javaherian, Abbas Kiarostami, Shirin Neshat, Donna Stein and Frank Stella.
She is referenced in an excerpt from The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture by Nader Ardalan and Laleh Bakhtiar (1973), and an annotated timeline of Farmanfarmaian's life by Negar Azimi.