Vahedi is an authentic poet of painting and sculpture. We can admire his multiple aptitudes, and especially his talent with ceramics, which he treats with unique skill and efficiency.
His own life is exemplary: Iranian by birth and partly in his artistic training, Italian by adoption, he is indeed very involved in the life and culture of his new country. Thus, Vahedi concretely represents in his body of work the ancient, perpetual dream of an encounter between the Persian and Latin cultures. Upon closer inspection, both are among the most ancient, ancestral cultures in the world, suspended between the East and the West. Persia acts as some kind of majestic and solemn borderline, both dividing and uniting two completely different contexts, ones that are, however, interconnected by common values and aspirations.
Two imperial cultures that celebrate figurative media, as well as music and poetry. And Vahedi does precisely that: he is an extremely delicate poet, scrutinizing the noblest of human feelings. He is a passionate figurative artist who, over time, has acquired both skill and competence and has succeeded in producing a memorable body of work. He is for both esteemed and loved for his artistic contributions.
His works of art display a multitude of techniques and can be grouped together as series, each of them with a strong internal coherence. Some paintings, for instance, often represent actual eruptions of color expanding within the painting itself, like colorful lava overflowing from a volcano or pigments exploding into fireworks.
The largest part of Vahedi’s production consists of ceramics and by contrast they seem to be conceived as colored rain dropping on surfaces to create a sense of joy and animation, which is very typical of this artist. Somehow, he aims at communicating a latent energy intrinsic to the very materials from which his works are made. He composes them in this same fashion, bestowing a beneficial gift upon viewers. The same vital strength and energetic charge circulate through his sculptures, representing a valuable chapter in his fervent activity. There, irony, lightness, wit and sovereign elegance overlap and refract an airy and fabulous universe of images, strongly referencing the pictorial part of his production.
Vahedi studied in Italy with important teachers and traces from those interactions can still be perceived, even though they do not influence his work per se.
For example, the great power of color that characterizes Sandro Trotti’s work is recalled as an underlying feeling in Vahedi’s unique style, while suggestions from the art of Pericle Fazzini are highlighted in his beautiful sculptures as well.
Vahedi has translated all these influences into a personal language, achieving overwhelming freedom and principles that make him beloved to anyone conceiving art as a positive, educational and liberating element.
The artist is a fine and elegant philosopher, capable of transforming the hardest concepts into the immediacy of visual joy. Viewers must seize on the opportunity to see this expertly collected series of Vahedi’s works, undoubtedly a worthy and inspiring esthetic experience.
Hassan Vahedi was born in 1947 in Teheran, and earned a degree in painting and sculpture from the Teheran Fine Arts Academy. There he was part the Talere Iran group with other artists and writers. After his arrival in Italy in 1974 he studied with important painters such as Montanarini and Trotti at Rome’s Fine Arts Academy. He lives and works in Rome and has participated in many collective and solo shows, both in Italy and abroad.
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