.jpg "“Love” by Mohammad Ehsaii")
TEHRAN – Works by prominent calligrapher and painter Mohammad Ehsaii shined at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art auction in Doha held on April 22, 2013.
His work “Love”, an acrylic and silver leaf on canvas in six parts that was among the first top lots, sold for U.S.$437,000, and his “Allah”, an oil on canvas in twelve parts, earned U.S.$197,000 dollars in the auction.
Works by several more Iranian artists including Farhad Moshiri, Nasrollah Afjeii, Jamshid Bayrami and Rokni Haerizadeh were also among the surprises of the sale, Sotheby’s has reported on its website.
The top lot was Donald Judd’s Untitled (Bernstein 90-01), which sold for just over US$3.5 million. Other works included Julie Mehretu’s “Rising Down”, which sold for US$3 million, and “Icons of the Nile” by Chant Avedissian, which set a record for the artist at US$1.56 million.
However, the sale at Sotheby’s achieved a total of US$15,199,750, the highest price ever for an auction of contemporary art in the Middle East.
Robin Woodhead, chairman of Sotheby’s International believes that Sotheby’s ability to attract bidding from collectors from 15 countries across four continents in this auction affirmed the growing importance of the region in the international art world.
Mohammad Ehsaii (born 1939) is undoubtedly one of the most prolific and talented calligraphers of the modern era. While his paintings display a level of technical proficiency on par with the old masters of the kufic, naskh and nastaliq traditions, his depictions are stripped of the superfluous adornments of their older counterparts, giving them a boldness, purity and immediacy which affirms the relevance of calligraphy in a modern context.
A true master of his craft, Ehsaii’s bold, stunning calligraphy is the modern standard-bearer of an artistic tradition spanning one thousand years.
RM/YAW
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