Art Exhibition by Mahmoud Zenderoudi
WHEN
Saturday, 11 Mar 2017 - 10:00 AM
Sunday, 12 Mar 2017 - 10:00 AM

WHERE
Lobby
Toronto Centre for the Arts

This exhibition includes 8 limited edition lithographs depicting Haft Peykar as well as 6  distinctly unique original pieces.

The Haft Peykar collection, created by Mahmoud Zenderoudi, came to life at the suggestion of Shahrokh Moshkin Ghalam before he first staged Haft Peykar. He wanted the paintings to to go on display simultaneous to the stage performance.  Master Zenderoudi came up with 8 pieces – one that encapsulated the entire story, and 7 others, each presenting one of the seven stages in the story. Over the course of centuries, many accomplished artists from Iran, India, Afghanistan and Caucasus have masterfully illustrated the admirable colorful world of Haft Peykar through colors, shapes, numbers and words, but few have illustrated this literary masterpiece as beautifully as Zenderoudi who, for the first time, steps into the imaginary world of Nezami with a modern look, and conveys the intricate story with beautiful shapes and forms, using 7 colour palettes and vertical and horizontal lines, as well as geometric shapes to create never before seen images.  This is the first time that the seven stages of Haft Peykar (7 Princesses), Nezami’s romantic masterpiece, have been made into individual works of art.  Each unique piece has been created using simple everyday materials such as wood, cork, cardboard, paper mache, newspaper cuttings, photographs, postcards, “sirish” glue, oil paint, acrylic paint, gold leaf and fabric. The essence of the reliefs is poetry and calligraphy combined and detaches the viewers from reality, transporting them into the colourful world of Haft Peykar. The HAFT PEYKAR collection, conceived around 2004, has been exhibited in Paris, New York and Switzerland as well as Montpellier in France.

The original collection is currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran.