.jpg "Amir-Esmaeil Sonduzi’s colleagues and friends applaud after the unveiling of a wax effigy of the Iranian painter and sculptor at the Sonduzi Museum in Tehran on February 16, 2013. (ISNA/Amir Kholusi)")
TEHRAN -- A life-size wax effigy of the U.S.-based Iranian sculptor, painter, and dentist Amir-Esmaeil Sonduzi has been unveiled at his museum in Tehran.
The statue has been created by Hamid Kangarani Farahani, whose works are kept in many Iranian and foreign collections.
“It was great honor for me to make the sculpture,” Kangarani Farahani said during a ceremony the Sonduzi Museum held on Saturday to unveil the artwork.
“My works are mostly realistic. However, I am also interested in surrealistic works,” he stated.
“The sculptures created by master Sonduzi are figurative and some of them that were inspired by Persian literature are conceptual,” he added.
A number of Sonduzi’s colleagues and friends also attended the ceremony at the museum, which once was his office for dentistry.
“His character was amazing,” painter Hossein Mahjubi said in a short speech.
“When he was in Iran, I saw him many times creating a painting or a sculpture in a corner of his office as he pursued his job as a dentist,” he added.
Making the statue has been sponsored by the Tehran Municipality.
Mahjubi asked the municipality to extend the space of the museum by adding the properties adjacent to the museum.
Two years before he left Iran to live in San Diego in 1998, Sonduzi, 84, donated his office to the Tehran Municipality to convert it into a museum in order to display a large collection of his works.
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