Mansour Vakili Mansour Vakili started painting in high school and became interested in sketching Iranian antiquities in
historical cities at the Faculty of Fine Arts, headed by Houshang Seyhoun.
After going to France and continuing his studies at the Higher School of Fine Arts in Paris, he made numerous
sketches of historical monuments and sights of central and southern France. He then continued to get
acquainted with French culture, art, and history with watercolor painting.
In Monaco, while continuing to work on architectural design and under the influence of the energetic nature of
the southern coast of France, he began painting with inspiration from the rare landscapes around him using the
oil pastel technique on paper with expressive expression. The profound emotional impact of this period is always
evident in his later works.
After his return to Paris and winning several architectural competitions, he was under a lot of pressure from the
architectural profession. Then, this time, the painting was influenced by nostalgia about childhood memories
and culture and political events, war, etc. At that time, he turned to Iranian literature, writing, and calligraphy.
The achievement of this period is his abstract paintings of calligraphy; Sometimes from right to left and
sometimes from left to right, but he never turned to calligraphy and believed that by following the hand
movement and gesture of Iranian calligraphy and its literary burden, one could achieve a genuine modern
painting concerning Iranian culture.
Exploring the history of ancient art and civilization of the East and the West is an inspiration for Mansour Vakili.
He believes that a committed contemporary artist should follow the valuable resources of the enlightenment, art,
and culture of his past and coordinate them with developments of today's life. Looking at his exhibitions in Iran
and France, the subject of memories, dreams ... in the form of reconstructed imaginations, familiar and
unknown, clear and vague, happy and worried, is always seen in his works. He says that he spends hours, days,
and weeks in front of each painting in isolation but close to memories and with the serenity of classical music in
a meditative atmosphere.
Works of art are always created by people in danger and have gone to the ultimate stage of their belief, where
no human being has gone beyond it. The farther and farther we go, we create the purest, most personal, and rarest life. |