Charles Hossein Zenderoudi

Zand Gallery, Tehran
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1976

This work is in very good condition. There canvas is slightly slack. There are some light water marks scattered in place, all of which are inherent to the artist’s working process. The canvas is slightly undulating. The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate with the overall tonality being softer than the original work. The overall composition is tending more towards vivid pastel hues throughout.
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A leading figure of the Iranian modernist movement, Charles Hossein Zenderoudi was still a student in Tehran when he co-founded the Saqqa Khaneh school and set out to create a distinctly artistic form of national expression that was fundamentally linked to modern styles. As a self-taught calligrapher, he broke from the traditional boundaries of the discipline and established himself as a neo-traditional Persian artist. Through his prolific work, Zenderoudi aspired to produce thought-provoking art.

After winning a prestigious prize at the Paris Biennale in 1960, Zenderoudi settled in Paris the following year. While allowing himself to be influenced by the European art milieu, he maintained a studio in Tehran, preserving an essential connection with his homeland. This double-rooting shaped his artistic style, establishing himself as a middle ground between Western abstraction and the Iranian cultural movements of the time. “Life in Paris gave Zenderoudi the necessary confidence to choose art as a lifetime career. The economic prosperity in Iran in the 1970’s further solidified his position as the leading figure of a developing artistic movement; his work gravitated from formalistic pattern and geometry to chaos and kinetic movement”. (Kamran Diba in conversation with Lina Lazaar, September 2008)

Zenderoudi looks to the dialectic between Western and Eastern art as a dialogue, a negotiation rather than emancipation from an art form reliant on Western tenets. “The artist was very aware of Western art and, in a personal way, interacted with international art movements and trends. The dialogue with modernity gave him a distinctive role as he navigated between east and west.” (Kamran Diba in conversation with Lina Lazaar, September 2008).

Through his work, Zenderoudi distorts the traditional values of calligraphy in order to better appropriate it. His intention is to empty words from their literal meaning. Less becomes more; freeing letters from linguistics cancels the distancing of writing, permits an immediate closeness and triggers an emotional, primal response in the viewer. The artist chooses to use epigraphy not for aesthetical purposes but for its textual importance and the mental imageries that only calligraphy can provide. However, Zenderoudi refuses the classical distinction between form and meaning. He prefers to use the word “writing” instead of calligraphy, for the very essence of his work is not held in the iconic content but is unveiled in the superficial aesthetic form.

The present work, Untitled, from 1972 is emblematic of the juncture at which Zenderoudi left talismanic depictions to embrace intricate calligraphy ( in this case numbers) and bazaari's stamps, borrowed from the culture of his native land. A demiurge at creating a balanced synthesis of vernacular memory and abstract contemporary painting, Zenderoudi’s work does not cease to touch us with its spiritual intensity.