Iran Darroudi
Iran Darroudi (September 1936 – 29 October 2021) was a revered Iranian painter, director, writer, art critic, and university professor. Her art consists of surreal paintings dealing with Iranian-themed imagery and intense lighting.
Darroudi studied at Ecole Superior des Beaux-Arts in Paris, history of art at the École du Louvre in Paris, stained glass at the Royal Academy of Brussels, and television direction and production at the RCA Institute in New York City.
Iran Darroudi was born on September 2, 1936, in Mashhad, Iran, to a family consisting of traders from Khorasan on her father’s side. On her mother’s side, the family was Caucasian merchants who had settled in Mashhad. Her family moved to Hamburg, Germany, in 1937, and by the early 1940s, they were forced to leave because of the beginnings of World War II. By 1945 her family returned to Mashhad.
In 1968 Darroudi was commissioned by the ITT corporation to create an artwork entitled Iranian Petroleum on the launch of a pipeline from Abadan to Mashahr. The painting generated a great deal of media interest and was published in Time magazine, Newsweek, and Life Magazine – to name but a few. The artwork was later dubbed “Our Veins, the Earth’s Veins” by Ahmad Shamlou, a distinguished Iranian poet.
In New York City, she met her husband, Parviz Moghadasi, who was also studying television directing at the time. The two began to collaborate on various projects at a newly established television production company. Over six years, they produced over 80 documentaries about both Iranian and international artists.
Darroudi’s lifetime achievements include her 60 individual exhibitions and 200 group exhibitions, art critiques published in various newspapers, colorful speeches in cultural and artistic establishments around the world, and last but not least, an autobiography, “Distance between two points.”
These are the results of more than 50 years of her work in Contemporary Art of Iran. The same activities that she carried out while rubbing shoulders with great individuals such as Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau, Antonio Rodriguez, and Ahmad Shamloo.
Today she’s hailed as one of the most influential artists in the world, with her artwork displayed at internationally recognized venues such as the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts, the Kerman Museum of Fine Arts, the Sa’dabad Palace, the Saheb Gharani-e Palace, Belgium’s Ixelles Museum and several exhibitions of Contemporary Art in New York.
ZH Magazine has introduced her as one of the 100 most influential Iranian artists in the last century.
