Nickzad Nodjoumi

One of Iran's most internationally acclaimed artists, in recent decades he has gained a wide audience in Iran and abroad, and his work is now in the permanent collections of museums such as the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the British Museum in London and the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi. He specialized in painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran and attended the City College of New York to continue his education. When he returned to Iran in 1974, he was banned from teaching at the university because of his political activities in the United States. Nevertheless, he continued to exhibit regularly in Iran until 1978, before moving to the United States permanently in 1980. Although his work has changed drastically, influenced by the artistic movements of the time, Nodjoumi has always taken political and social contexts into consideration, depicting the relationship between power and violence in his paintings. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in museums around the world, especially in the United States. In 2003, Stefan Stux Gallery presented his work at the Armory Show. In 2008, he collaborated with Shirin Neshat on the curatorial project "Ardeshir Mohassess: Art and Satire in Iran", held at the Asia Society Museum in New York. In 2015, his work was featured in the group exhibition "Bazm and Razm: Feast and Fight in Persian Art", held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.