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Lot 448*

Aydin Aghdashloo
(Iran, born 1940)
Untitled (from the Memories of Destruction series)

8 April 2014, 10:30 BST
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £27,500 inc. premium

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Aydin Aghdashloo (Iran, born 1940)

Untitled (from the Memories of Destruction series)
acrylic and goldleaf on cardboard, framed
signed and dated "aydin 2013" (lower centre)
75 x 55cm (29 1/2 x 21 5/8in).

Footnotes

Provenance:
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

"Memories of Destruction covers universal themes, from magnificent objects and excellent paintings, to young and proud faces that believe glorious times will continue for eternity, and those wrinkled, crumpled, broken and ruined visages that are signs of our unavoidable future. While many pretend to be oblivious to this truth, like the oracle at the Temple of Delphi, the painters brush bitterly reminds them.

The first work in the series was a recreation of a portrait by Sandro Boticelli, in which I removed the face and in its place portrayed the landscape. After that painting, conversion and destruction ensued and I reconstructed masterpieces from art history with every detail, decay and varnish crack and destroyed them violently. This style developed into a metaphor of what the natural life cycle does to the youthful beauty of growing beings. In some works the destructions happen by changing and transforming the painting itself, and in others by actually tearing it, scratching it with a knife, or even burning parts of the piece. The extent of damage depends on my inner emotions at the time. In moments of dark and bitter crises, the paintings were almost completely annihilated.


My visual world is typically sad and envious. And so the statements are not simply flat. And so it is judgmental, and looks at death and destruction bitterly and with sorrow. It is not so easy to demolish a perfect, skilful, precise artwork yet I do it only to participate in the moment of destruction and to reach that infinity. Burying a knife in a beautiful painting and twisting it on behalf o death, it is as if I stab myself" - Aydin Aghdashloo

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