JALAL SHABAHANGI

Born in 1935, Iran. Jalal Shabahangi has had a significant role in the Iranian art scene and held many shows in Iran and abroad. His paintings of scattered trees and velvety hills exude tranquillity and stillness, embodying the feel of a daydream. His mentality strays away the fixed patterns of modern art, developing a new style that shows nature untouched, rosy and blooming, a quiet oasis of calm for urgent agitated minds. He explores the relationships between the human body and soul through intact, spare landscapes of forests, mountains and hills, images that draw the viewer in through their effortlessly simple compositions. His paintings are like fairy tales, where everything is beautiful, captured in pleasing, balanced tonal colours of greens, greys, oranges and yellows. They distract us from the ugliness of the world we sometimes see and speak to the sometimes forgotten small part of us that remains deeply connected to nature.

Jalal Shabahangi has been painting these dreamlike landscapes of Iran for more than 25 years. Born in 1935 in Tehran, after graduating from San Jose State University in California, he joined the University of Tehran’s faculty of Fine Art and taught courses in visual arts for 30 years. He has also been professionally engaged in glasswork throughout his artistic life.