Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, Paris
Originally from the collection of the french sculptor, Andre Bloc
Acquired by the above from he artist in 1960

Bonhams is delighted to present a seminal work by pioneering abstract artist Behjat Sadr from the collection of the renowned French sculptor, Andre Bloc.

Behjat Sadr is remembered as one of the founding artists of abstract art in Iran, and for some time, one of its sole accomplished protagonists. Meticulous, erudite and supremely perceptive, her work is characterized by a mastery of the painterly aesthetic, using the visual vocabulary of abstract and gestural art in depiction of spontaneous patterned compositions.

Born in Iran, Sadr was the younger sister of Noṣrat-Allah Amini, the mayor of Tehran during the tense period of Moḥammad Moṣṣadeq's premiership from 1951 to 1953. She was enrolled in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Tehran University in 1948. After graduating, she left for Rome in 1956 where, upon recommendation of Marco Grigorian, she met with Roberto Melli (1885-1958), who liked her work and became her mentor. In the same year, she attended Roberto Melli Academy, Academia di Belle Arti, and later the Naples Academy of Fine Arts Melli introduced her to several prominent gallery owners and critics, and she was able to hold major exhibitions in Europe. Meanwhile her work, along with the works of a few young Iranians, was selected for inclusion at the Venice Biennale.

In 1958 Behjat married Morteza Hannaneh, a well-known Iranian composer who was living in Italy at the time. Upon graduation they returned back to Tehran, and in 1960 Behjat started teaching at the Faculty of Fine Arts as an associate professor. In 1966 Behjat Sadr travelled to Paris on a sabbatical and became Gustave Singier's assistant. Singier, a Belgian non-figurative painter, was also a teacher at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, and taught Behjat many novel techniques. Inspired and excited, Behjat returned home in 1968 and became the Chair of The Department of Visual Arts at Tehran University. Behjat Sadr was diagnosed with breast cancer in the late 1990s and died of a heart attack at 85 in the South of France.

Sadr's work occupied a unique space in the landscape of twentieth century Iranian art. The dominant trend in the 1950's was movement away from the European inspired academic formalism of the Qajar era and a drive towards the discovery of an indigenous modern aesthetic but one whose key ingredients were popular religious imagery and neo-traditionalist motif's. Sadr's work crushed these parochial boundaries; unconcerned with pursuing a nationalistic artistic agenda she embraced a visual language that was dedicated to expression and technique.

Andre Bloc

André Bloc was a highly influential cultural figure during the post-war period. Bloc first attended the École Centrale in 1920 and befriended Le Corbusier and Auguste Perret. He was a passionate advocate of integration of the arts, and architectural and urban reform. In 1930 he founded the journal "Architecture d'Aujourd'hui", and in 1949 the influential review "Art d'Aujourd'hui". In 1949 he embraced pure abstraction creating concrete sculptures for which he received several public commissions. In 1951 he published the "Éspace" manifesto calling for a utopian harmony through social integration of the arts, signed by many artists, designers and architects, including Le Corbusier, Alberto Magnelli, Jean Deyrolle, Serge Poliakoff, Edgard Pillet, Silvano Bozzolini, Jean Leppien and Victor Vasarely. He took a highly pluralist approach to art experimenting with a diverse range of materials. The present work is a wonderful example of his more expressionistic abstraction incorporating a remarkable amount of impasto to create an almost sculptural texture. During the 1960's he created a series of habitable sculptures called "Cell Sculptures", and also a radical proposal of urban reconstruction called "Parallel Paris".

Regularly exhibiting at the avant-garde salons including the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles from 1949, and Salon de la Jeune Sculpture, Bloc established a distinguished reputation. He held numerous solo shows in Paris including at the Galerie Denise René, as well as Brussels, 1953; Milan, 1957, 1959; Amsterdam, 1958; Rome, 1958; Rio de Janeiro, 1959; Sao Paulo, 1959. Also many group shows including with Kandinsky and Poliakoff in Saarbrucken, 1954; and recently "Espace: Arte Concreta in Italia e in Francia 1948-1958", Bologna, 1999; and "Vision Machine", Musée des Beaux Arts, Paris, 2000; "André Bloc: Entre Art et Architecture", Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, 2015.