MARCOS GRIGORIAN | The Basis of a Road

Collection of the Artist
Seyhoun Gallery, Tehran
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1989

Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is no restoration apparent when viewed under the UV light. Colour: The catalogue illustration is accurate; although there are stronger, slightly denser and darker and more earthy tonalities in the original work.
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Marcos Grigorian was a key figure in the development and establishment of Iranian modern art. Internationally acclaimed due to his forward thinking and contemporary aesthetic, he is most celebrated for his iconic works comprising the minimalistic yet highly symbolic Earthworks series. This group of works was executed from 1963 onwards when the artist first moved to New York. Influences for this series are a combination of Grigorian’s obsession with his past and a personal sense of displacement, alongside sentiments of homesickness for his native soil. The artist is also one of the pioneers of Land Art, though hardly ever credited in the West for his contribution to this movement. Grigorian's nostalgic and humble canvases of dried earth have a strong relation to the monumentality of Assyrian or Achaemenid reliefs and heritage.These works, mostly executed in square and rectangular format, allude to forms of sacred geometry and esoteric symbolism referencing harmonious proportions essential for unity of the universe. Symbolic of the earth, the simple and familiar rectangular shape became a compositional signature for Grigorian. The organic materials employed in their creation, such as hay, sand, soil and clay built onto the canvas surface result in a texturally rich three-dimensional quality. Via both medium and form, the artist conveys notions of heavenly spirits and earthly matter. From the parched foreground emerges renewed life, the soil and golden tonalities alluding to rebirth and the sun. The vital unification of death and rebirth; spirit and tangible matter, are integral components to the notion of conception.

This 1966 work with the central section filled with straws is one of the earliest yet most accomplished Earthworks by Grigorian from this period. According to curator Donna Stein: "he conceived two alternatives to the blackness he perceived: death and earth - the land, the soil, which was life. Since 1960, all of Grigorian's artistic investigations and production derive from this singular fascination with earth matter and the material that belongs to the land" (Introduction in Earthworks exhibition at Gorky Gallery in New York, 1989). Challenging tradition, Grigorian employs Persian desert dust, smearing it across his surface plane to create a dehydrated cracked surface texture demanding to be touched. His avant-garde experimentations with broad ranging materials and mediums are particularly innovative due to their experimentally formal reductive aesthetic, producing uniquely engaging textural effects. The minimal nature of his palette and abjectness of materials, coupled with three-dimensional assemblage gift his works with an emotively raw and provocative narrative.

Further examples of Grigorian's Earthworks can also be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA, New York and Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art as well as the National Gallery of Armenia in Yerevan.