Parviz Tanavoli valuation
Founded Iranian modern sculpture, and made Heech — the Persian word for nothing — into a form.
Parviz Tanavoli was born in Tehran in 1937, trained in Italy, and is generally regarded as the founder of modern sculpture in Iran and a central figure in the Saqqakhaneh movement, which drew on Shia devotional objects, folk metalwork, locks and calligraphy.
What a work by Parviz Tanavoli is worth
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Bio
Parviz Tanavoli was born in Tehran in 1937, trained in Italy, and is generally regarded as the founder of modern sculpture in Iran and a central figure in the Saqqakhaneh movement, which drew on Shia devotional objects, folk metalwork, locks and calligraphy. From 1965 he worked repeatedly with Heech — the Persian word meaning nothing — whose three letters form a standing figure with a bowed head, made in bronze, fibreglass and neon at every scale. He taught at Tehran University, collected Persian rugs and lion carvings, and has divided his life between Tehran and Vancouver.
Prices for modern Middle Eastern art are set principally in Dubai and London, and Tanavoli is one of the strongest names in that market. The Heech sculptures exist across many editions, materials and sizes, and identifying which is the whole task — bronze, fibreglass, ceramic and neon versions of the same form are not comparable. Cast number, foundry and date should be established. Earlier unique works from the 1960s and the Saqqakhaneh period lead. Prints, works on paper and jewellery form a smaller part of the output.
At a glance
- Born
- 1937, Tehran
- Movements
- Contemporary art, Hurufiyya Movement, Saqqa-Khaneh School
Carrara, Minneapolis and the Rasht 29 Club
Tanavoli studied at the Tehran School of Fine Arts from 1952, then at the academy in Carrara in 1956 and 1957 and at the Brera in Milan, graduating in 1959. Back in Tehran he taught sculpture at the College of Decorative Arts, where Hossein Zenderoudi was among his students, and from 1961 to 1964 he taught at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. In 1967 he co-founded the Rasht 29 Club, a meeting place for Tehran's artists.
He directed the sculpture department at Tehran University for eighteen years. Poet Turning into Heech, a bronze of 2007, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Heech sculptures are also in the British Museum. In 2015 the Davis Museum at Wellesley College gave him his first solo exhibition in the United States in four decades, and the Vancouver Art Gallery showed Poets, Locks, Cages in 2023.
The rug books, the Monograph and The Wall
Tanavoli was for a time a cultural adviser to the Shahbanu, Farah Pahlavi. He has written more than forty books, many of them on the crafts he collects, among them Lion Rugs of 1985 and studies of gabbehs, salt bags and Persian flatweaves, and his collection of Persian steel was published in the Oxford Studies in Islamic Art in 2000. In 2003 the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art gave him a retrospective, and he opened his Tehran house as a museum of his collection, which closed within months.
His Monograph, published in Dubai in 2010 in a numbered edition of 1,000 copies, is the nearest thing to a catalogue raisonné. The Wall (Oh Persepolis), a bronze of 1975 nearly two metres high covered in invented script, set an auction record for a Middle Eastern artist in 2008. In 2016 the Iranian authorities took his passport the day before he was due to speak at the British Museum, and in 2020 Tehran renamed a street in Niavaran after him.
Best auction results
- The Wall (Oh Persepolis) $2.84m
- Bronze, 1975 · Dubai · 30 April 2008
- Publicly reported
- A record at the time for a modern Middle Eastern artist at auction.
Results as reported at the time of sale, inclusive of buyer's premium. They are a record of what specific works achieved on specific days, not a guide to what any other work is worth.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
