Life and Works of Iranian Artist Massoud Arabshahi

Massoud Arabshahi was born in Tehran, Iran in 1935, and died there on Sept 16, 2019. He was an Iranian painter.

Galleryonline_ Arabshahi held his first solo exhibition at the Iran-India Centre, Tehran, in 1964, four years before graduating from the College of Decorative Arts, Tehran. His work includes oils on canvas, sculptures and architectural reliefs- among the latter commissions for the Office for Industry and Mining, Tehran, 1971, and the California Insurance Building, Santa Rosa, California, USA, 1985.

Along with his undergraduate degree in painting, sculpture, architecture, he succeeded in a special way, by incorporating mythological symbols into mysterious inscriptions, lines, and roles, expressing the oneness and direction induction pursued by knowledge in a skillful way.

His sources of inspiration comprise Achaemenid and Assyrian art as well as Babylonian carvings and inscriptions. Combining tradition and modernity. His work has been shown in a number of solo and group exhibitions in Iran, Europe and the United States including Two Modernist Iranian Pioneers, at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, 2001; and Iranian Contemporary Art, Barbican Centre, London, 2001. He used to work in Tehran and California.