Lot 36: NASSER ASSAR (IRANIAN, BORN 1928) Untitled oil on canvas, framed si

NASSER ASSAR (IRANIAN, BORN 1928) Untitled oil on canvas, framed signed Nasser and dated 1971 in English (lower right), executed in 1971 129 x 89cm (50 13/16 x 35 1/16in).

Provenance Property from a private collection, London Born in Tehran in 1928, Nasser Assar is one of the most seminal protagonists of the Iranian modernist movement. His works mark both a compositional departure from the academic formalism of the turn of the century, and a clear thematic circumvention of the dominant neo-traditionalist orthodoxy of his time. His migration to Paris in the 1950s coincided with a critical juncture in the progression of European modernism. Still in its infancy, the French post-war art scene eventually gave rise to the establishment of Tachism and Lyrical Abstraction, movements which heavily influenced the work of Assar. However, whilst operating alongside luminaries such as Tapies, Fautrier, De Stael and Wou Ki, Assar still developed a unique and distinctive style of abstract expressionism which was neither derivative nor imitative of his European counterparts. Assar’s canvases are wrought with a strong sense of conceptual duality derived from the inter-collation of calligraphy and landscape. Taken compositionally, Assar’s depiction are built up of pseudocalligraphic oriental letterforms set in an ethereal, polytonal landscape. Yet within the composition itself, letterforms and natural forms are inseparable, having seamlessly permeated their surroundings. This unrestricted oscillation between world and environment, aside from being technically progressive, itself serves as an aesthetic device for the expression of a far more profound artistic impulse whose genesis is found in the Zen calligraphy whose influence is so evident in Assar’s work.