Often referred to as the father of modern Iranian sculpture, Parviz Tanavoli is an artist, author, anthropologist, and teacher internationally appreciated for his enduring dedication to Persian culture. Born in 1937, Tanavoli attended Tehran University and later the Brera Academy in Milan, from which he graduated in 1959. He went on to teach sculpture at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design for three years, before returning to Iran to assume the directorship of the Sculpture Department at Tehran University for eighteen years. Since 1989, Tanavoli has lived and worked between Tehran and West Vancouver, continuing to teach and mentor a younger generation of artists at his studio.

One of the founding members of the highly influential neotraditionalist Saqqakhaneh school of art in Iran alongside Charles-Hossein Zenderoudi, Tanavoli’s work derives much from the country’s rich religious and folkloric heritage. Indeed, it was the very ethos of the movement to reconcile the traditional and the modern aesthetic. Each artist utilised their heritage in their own individual fashion, but it was Tanavoli who refused to become mired in what he came to believe was a derivative art form, heavily reliant on Western tenets. In response to this, he produced his iconic Poets and Lovers series. The present works, Poet in Love (1962) and Lovers XXVII (2013) symbolically combine two of the artist’s most salient recurring themes, whilst physically its totemic, carved form recalls the murals that ornament Ancient Persia’s greatest monuments.

On poetry, Tanavoli explains, “Two areas of Iranian art held a special appeal for me: poetry and architecture. In my view, Persian poetry was the purest emanation of the human soul” (the artist quoted in “Tanavoli by Tanavoli,” in Samar Faruqi (ed.), Parviz Tanavoli: Monogram, Dubai 2010, p. 89). Amongst the major themes of his oeuvre since the early 1960s, Tanavoli’s Poets speak to the relationship between poetry and the plastic arts, alluding to their shared cultural quest for perfection. In Persian mysticism, the poet is considered a symbol of the pious man and an intermediary for the love of God on earth; Rumi, Hafiz, Sa’adi, and Omar Khayyam were indeed the greatest exponents of mysticism. Deriving his visual style from traditional Persian culture, Tanavoli’s sculptures resurrect the tales of his forefathers.

In a similar vein, his Lovers are an ode to the legendary Persian love story of Shirin and Farhad; Farhad, the humble stonecutter, falls deeply in love with Armenian princess Shirin, and is promised her hand in marriage by his rival Sassanian king Khosrow Parviz on the condition that he carve a monumental staircase into Mount Behistun - an impossible undertaking. Upon the realization that Farhad may actually succeed, Khosrow deceives him into believing that Shirin has died and, devastated, Farhad takes his own life. This t.mes less story of love, devotion, and destiny became a cornerstone of Tanavoli’s artistic imagination, in which Farhad acts as both a muse and a moral exemplar. As he embraced the task of reviving sculpture in modern Iran, Tanavoli envisioned himself as Farhad’s spiritual disciple; his early works depict the sculptor and the artist in an intimate embrace, and over the course of his career new figures emerged in place of the artist, gradually giving form to what became the Lovers series.