Lot 116: CHARLES HOSSEIN ZENDEROUDI (Iran, born 1937) DJE-DJA-DJOU

Charles Hossein Zenderoudi (Iran, born 1937)
DJE-DJA-DJOU
acrylic on canvas, framed
signed and dated "Zenderoudi 75" (lower right), executed in 1975
210 x 140cm (82 11/16 x 55 1/8in).
FOOTNOTES
Charles Hossein Zenderoudi
"Once and again my soul did me implore,
To teach her, if I might, the heavenly lore;
I bade her learn the Alif well by heart.
Who knows that letter well need learn no more."
Khayyam

"In my early work, only black and white were important. I preferred to work in these two colours only, but in folk arts, colour is the determining factor. We know how well this aspect of colour was used in tazieh's - passion plays. Red had a negative effect and is used for garments and identification of felons. White and green have a positive effect and are used for the cloak of saints. In Spanish bull fighting stadiums bulls get aggressive and attack when facing a red fabric. Green has a pacifying effect... I first studied the science of colors and then reached a method of how to make use of them in my works. The use of color in my paintings had and has a philosophical origin."
Zenderoudi

The present work is a monumental and enigmatic example of Charles Hossein Zenderoudi's modern take on Persian calligraphy. Zenderoudi is widely considered one of Iran's most accomplished modern artists, and as a founding father of the highly influential Saqqa Khaneh movement, has been a pioneering figurehead of Iranian neo-traditionalism.

The Artist
Charles Hossein Zenderoudi was born in 1937 in Tehran. After his initial studies in mid 1950s, he entered the Fine Art College of Tehran University to study painting. In the late 1950s Zenderoudi created the Saqqa-khaneh movement which sought to counter the academic and Western derived art movements prevalent in Iran at the time in favour of a truly indigenous aesthetic, where popular and religious elements were synthesised within a distinctly modern artistic agenda.

He left Iran for Paris in 1961 where he met artists like Alberto Giacometti, Stephen Poliakoff and Lucio Fontana and writers such as Eugène Ionesco. Zenderoudi has received many accolades and won many international awards, starting at the biennales of Venice in 1960 and São Paolo in 1961, when he was still in his early 20s. Following the 1963 acquisition by New York's Museum of Modern Art of his K+L+32+H+4, which not only marked the first of his paintings to enter a major public collection but also served as a catalyst for other museums to follow suit, most of the world's prominent art institutions have sought to include his works in their collections – London's British Museum, Paris's Centre Pompidou and Copenhagen's Statens Museum, among others.

The Oeuvre

His choice of subject matter, calligraphy, has historically been the most established mode of formal artistic expression prevalent in Iran, but, by emphasizing form over meaning, and by stripping the written word down to its aesthetic, structural, fundaments, Zenderoudi subverts the traditional values of Persian calligraphy. Zenderoudi's text is intentionally illegible and carries no literal meaning, freeing it from the constraint of linguistic limitation, and imbuing it with a sense of universality which rescues the archaic practice of calligraphy from obscurity, giving it renewed relevance in a contemporary context.

Zenderoudi's compositions pay homage to centuries of Persian religious imagery and employ a systematic repetition of letter-forms that finds its genesis in the mystical practice of Sufi numerologists, who believed in the spiritual significance of singular letters and worked these principles into hugely intricate talismanic charts. Zenderoudi's methodical compositions, whilst not accurately following the grammar or axioms of numerology, capture the aesthetic and conceptual qualities of its cryptic nature.

Zenderoudi's early works focused on dense talismanic imagery, mixing iconography, freehand script and numerals. The density of these compositions sought to capture the visual intensity of popular religious expression in Iran, where banners, standards, altars, murals and mosques exuberantly adorn the urban landscape.

Works from the present series, composed in the mid 1970's, mark a shift towards a more compositionally terse, technical and measured approach to calligraphy. The crowded iconography of the early works is replaced by a greater focus on larger letter-forms, which exhibit a formal refinement lacking in their earlier counterparts.

Letterforms are given new life, freed from the classical monotone. Words are rendered with bold, colourful letters atypical of academic calligraphy, they fan elegantly outwards circumambulation an intertwined nucleus; the cyclical format and fractal quality of the composition harks to the meditative practises favoured by the Sufis,

Measured but spontaneous, technical yet effuse, Zenderoudi' manipulates Persian calligraphy with effortless ease, boasting a visual scope which faithfully captures the salient elements of Iran's traditional popular religious aesthetic. Rendered with the use of rich and vibrant colours, his canvases replicate the tonal and textural qualities of the votive art so common to the Iranian urban landscape.

Almost rhythmic in its grace, balance and composition, the present work is one of the finest examples of Zenderoudi's work from this period

The present lot is accompanied by a Certificate from Zenderoudi and will be included in his upcoming Catalogue raisonne