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MONIR SHAHROUDY FARMANFARMAIAN
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, born 1924 in Iran, left for the United States in 1945 and studied art at Cornell University, Parson’s School of Design, and the Art Student League of New York. She has exhibited in leading galleries and venues in Tehran, Paris, Venice, Bonn, and New York, where she lived and worked. Her return to Iran in 1957 shifted her focus to Iranian folk art such as textiles, mirror work, reverse glass paintings, and tribal costumes and jewelry. She became an avid collector and amassed significant collections. Monir’s practice was deeply influenced by Islamic geometric design which she reinvented with her own unique modernist flair, using a vast range of materials for her work such as mirrors, collages, reverse glass paintings, stained glass, and silk carpets.
She died in April 2019, at her home in Tehran. Her life and her works, especially the geometric mirror works that she called “signs of light and life,” are particularly inspiring testimonies of a brilliant encounter between modernity and the beauty of traditional crafts.