Hossein Mahjoubi
“The embodiment of a century” One Hundred Years of Visual Arts of Iran
(Part One)
Source of Images: Selected Works of Hossein Mahjoubi, Zarrin and Samin Publications, 2012
Writer and Director: Amir Soghrati
Research Assistant: Najwa Erfani
Motion Graphics: Masoud Talebani
Text Narrator: Amir Soghrati
Logo Design: Mohammad Fadaei
Editing: Mojtaba Fallahi
Project Manager: Harf-e Honar Studio
Producer: Institute for the Development of Contemporary Visual Arts
Supported by the General Directorate of Visual Arts, Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Islamic Republic of Iran
Hossein Mahjoubi was born in Lahijan and is one of the passionate and mystical artists and one of the most prominent modernist painters in Iran, who has been devoted to painting nature for the past seventy years.
His essence can be found in his paintings; captivating, serene, and delightful paintings, with exquisite and beautiful images of his homeland, Gilan, with its sky-reaching trees, clay-roofed houses, and white horses. Living in the lush and joyful atmosphere of Gilan played a significant role in his fondness for painting nature. He portrays tranquil and delightful landscapes, expressing his objection to human manipulation of nature in his works. His paintings are not merely decorative and devoid of meaning; rather, each of his works reflects his emotions and feelings towards nature, existence, and creation.
Rabindranath Tagore says: “Trees are Earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven,” and now Hossein Mahjoubi’s trees strive to communicate with the beholder of paradise.
In Iranian modernist painting, artists like Sohrab Sepehri, Abolqasem Saidi, Davoud Amadian, and Hossein Mahjoubi are among those who have depicted nature according to their worldview and have left enduring pieces of Iranian art. Among them, Mahjoubi’s approach to portraying nature is to showcase its beauty and emphasize the rejection of violence, destruction, and ruin.
Hossein Mahjoubi was born in 1309, the same year as Behnam Mahjoubi, Jazzeh Tabatabai, Abdolreza Daryabegi, Sirak Melkonian, Lilit Turian, Abdolhamid Eshragh, Hannibal Al-Khasi, Karim Emami, and Gholamreza Takhti. He lived in Lahijan until the age of 20. In his youth, away from his father’s eyes, he would come from Lahijan to Rasht and visit Seyyed Mohammad Habib Mohammadi’s shop, observing Habib Mohammadi’s paintings from behind the shop window. Habib Mohammadi was a painter who had studied in Russia and besides painting portraits in Rasht’s shops, he also taught. He was the teacher of Behnam Mahjoubi and Aidin Aghdashloo. Mahjoubi met Behnam Mahjoubi, his contemporary, who was learning painting in Habib Mohammadi’s shop.
The School of Applied Industries, founded by Kamal-ol-Molk, became the precursor to the establishment of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran in 1319. In 1949, the School of Fine Arts was renamed the Faculty of Fine Arts. The year 1949 was significant because in the same year, the first professional gallery named Apadana was founded in Tehran by Mahmoud Javadi Pour, Hossein Kazemi, and Houshang Ajoudani, and in the same year, Jalil Ziapour founded the Association and the magazine, Khorous-e-Jangi, in Tehran.
A year later, in 1330, Hossein Mahjoubi went to Alborz High School in Tehran for his studies. Alborz was previously an American college managed by Dr. Jordan, an American, until 1940. His coming to Tehran and studying in Alborz was owed to his fellow townsman and father’s friend, Dr. Mohammad Ali Mojtahedi Gilani. Mojtahedi was the director of Alborz High School, the president of the University of Iran, the head of the Tehran Polytechnic Institute, and the founder of Sharif University of Technology, who had a close and sincere friendship with Hossein Mahjoubi throughout his life.
In 1954, five years after the establishment of the Faculty of Fine Arts, he passed the entrance exam and entered this faculty, graduating with honors in the painting department in 1959. For his university project, he drew a political piece titled “Unfortunate,” depicting poor and destitute individuals. In the center of the painting, we see a poor man who has fallen accidentally, surrounded by several people. All are poor, destitute, and in distress, with no solution to their plight. Seven sad and distressed men and women who seem to be comforting each other. In the corner of the left side, we see a part of a dog’s body, and behind the picture, there are houses and trees. Mahjoubi was one of the first to portray a critical situation of Tehran in his painting. He also drew Tehran in 1953. Two different views of north and south of Tehran from the balcony of his house on Farvardin Street in the current republic, where southern Tehran is engulfed in smoke from brick kilns. A document from Tehran seventy years ago.
In 1956, he participated in the exhibition of resident painters in Tehran, which was held with the presence of Iranian and American painters, and received three awards in watercolor and oil painting categories, which was his first step in introducing himself to the Iranian art community. He also won the Special Royal Award in 1978 for the illustrations of the Rain Myth, about the battle between Tishtar (Rain) and Apoush (Dry Devil), and perhaps fewer people know that he was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen International Children’s Book Award in the same year.
Mahjoubi is the designer of Saei Park. He, who has been the head of the technical office of the Tehran Parks Organization for more than 12 years, has had a significant role in designing and implementing Laleh, Jamshidieh, Niavaran, Mellat Parks, the green space of Azadi Stadium, Mehrabad Airport to Azadi Square, the green space of Behesht Zahra Tehran, Modares and Chamran Expressways, and the design and implementation of Iranian desert parks, which reflects his love for nature and trees.
Although Hossein Mahjoubi only depicts a paradisiacal nature, in each of his works, the ease and negligence of man’s destiny are evident. Man is absent from the works, but his absence and confrontation with the vitality and joyfulness of an imaginary paradise confront us with the regret of living in the present moment. The tragic course of life in conditions where the world is heading towards destruction and annihilation has also influenced contemporary art. In the midst of this, the artist, as one of the nerve gears of anxiety and destruction, reproduces signs of anger and rebellion to stand against it empty of rebellion. Mahjoubi’s solution to the blow of nothingness emphasizes existence: he portrays a kind nature that is not present, but is the destiny of the earth.
Hossein Mahjoubi is in love with nature, animals, and people, free from any darkness and devoid of bitterness and filth, like the colorful arches of his paintings, full of light, color, joy, and happiness. His concern for the future of the earth compels him to paint, to serve as a wake-up call to the dormant minds of those who are not aware of the terrifying future of this vulnerable world.
