dideh: Nima Petgar:biography

Nima Petgar was born in 1946 in Tehran. His father, Ali Asghar Petgar, who was well known for his realistic and traditional paintings, taught him the principles of drawing and painting. Having acquired these basic principles and techniques, the young Petgar started out as a painting assistant in his father's workshop in 1965. At the same time, he continued studying, for he wished to learn about other painting styles and to acquire enough experience to leave his father’s workshop. Eventually, in 1968, he left for Italy to study at the Rome Art Academy, from which he graduated in 1973. Upon his return to Iran in 1976, he spent a short time teaching art at universities, then set up his own classes and workshop.

Petgar focuses on one theme or concept at a time, painting numbers of works that eventually turn into a series of conceptually related pictures. These series could be chronologically classified as:

1) the Zen-inspired combined works that Petgar calls "Emptiness" or "Silence." He produced these works, which were in a way dialogues with himself, following his return from Italy. They are painted with brown ink on light-brown sheets of paper.

2) "Combined Faces," which were inspired by Petgar’s studies in Italy. Each represents a basic stone on which the structure and combination of the works included in "Big Portraits" were based.

3) "Big Portraits," which are in reality a form of modern portraiture, created using a rich archaic language combined with Oriental fragility. This tendency toward archaism can be traced in both the application of the shapes and in the text and discourse of the paintings. The expressionless faces that Petgar creates lie somewhere between the living, breathing fleshiness of an animate organism and the cold remoteness of a stone portrait bust. The archaic tone of his figures is reminiscent of that of ancient Roman statues seen from the front. The impressions that Petgar’s portraits convey are of humans stuck in a dilemma between dreams and realities, as if they are on the edge between life and death. These sometimes manneristic paintings give the impression that the painter already knew he was illustrating a dead phenomenon that would never return. The faces are parts of a statue that has been shattered into many pieces, but the artist’s mind still remains attached to the statue while mourning its loss. It remains a great ideal within himself, and he replaces his lost image with his designs.

4) the scenes called "Myths," which have been painted with pale and blue tints to express the concept of a dead world.

5) the works titled "Shahnameh," which are loosely based on the scenes and events of Ferdowsi’s book of legends and epics, Shahnameh.

6) "Cliffs," which are an extension of the same chain of thought and expression Petgar used in creating the "Big Portraits." The framework of each painting is a big cliff, which is combined with symbolic images portraying the mysteries of life and death.

Ali Asghar Gharebaghi

One-man exhibitions:

Group exhibitions: