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Few would think of Iran when looking for unexplored venuesof contemporary painting. Yet it is in that age-old culture that thenext artistic gold mine lies ready to be quarried. Three succeedinggenerations of contemporary painters marked by the aestheticsof one of the oldest civilizations in the world have produced someof the most beautiful works of our time.

The urge to tap new sources in order to satisfy the everexpandingdemand for contemporary art is simply too strongfor some of the most talented creators on the world scene to beignored much longer. The works of the artists introduced here sellon the Iranian market at prices mostly ranging between $2,000and $20,000. Artists such as Nasser Arasteh can be contactedfrom abroad on their personal Web sites. Others can be reachedvia the Web sites of the galleries that handle their work, like theLazar Art Gallery, run by Janet Lazarian, in northern Tehran.

This is not to suggest that all Iranian painters, or sculptorsfor that matter, have escaped attention. Some have beensought after in the Western world. Paintings by the Tehran-born Abstract Expressionist Kamran Katouzian are in theMuseum of Modern Art, in New York, as are three-dimensionalworks by Parviz Tanavoli. In the April auction at Christie’sDubai of contemporary Arab and Iranian art, one of Tanavoli’ssculptures fetched $2.8 million, a record for the artist. But likeother Iranians who have achieved recognition in the global artmarket, Katouzian and Tanavoli essentially belong to the internationalcontemporary school. The painters who remain to bediscovered are those whose art is cast in the mold of Iranianaesthetics, not by design but by deeply rooted instinct. Theydo not belong to an organized movement, nor are their worksremotely connected to the revivalism that only leads to kitschof the worst kind in Iran—whenever attempts are made to paintin the manner of 16th and 17th-century manuscript paintingsknown as “Persian miniatures.”

The first generation of great contemporary painters arenow in their late 60s or older, and their backgrounds vary greatly.Mansoureh Hosseini, from Tehran, was born in 1926, and NasserArasteh, from Kermanshah, in 1942. While both worked andexhibited long before the revolution that brought down the Shah’sregime in February of 1979, none curried favor with the powersthat be. In their art, each went his or her own way, but their worksall share one feature: As they progressed, the imprint of Iranianaesthetics became ever more visible in their color schemes andsense of rhythm.

Only one of the artists from the first generation,Mansoureh, obtained a measure of internationalrecognition, largely because after completing herpostgraduate degree at the Rome Academy of FineArts, she spent years in Italy. A chance meeting in 1959with Lionello Venturi, the art historian who wroteabout the Impressionists, among others, spared theyoung woman the mistake of getting bogged downin the French post-Fauve style that she was practicing at the time.The Italian writer wryly remarked that he would have hailedher as a genius a half-century earlier, but now she was 50 yearsbehind the times.

Mansoureh, as she signs herself, quickly developed her firstoriginal style, which is best described as swirling abstractionism.Color rolls like water in heavy seas in an untitled compositionthat is reproduced in Pioneers of Iranian Modern Art: MansourehHosseini, the bilingual book in Persian and English edited byRuyin Pakbaz and Yaghoub Emdadian, which accompanied her2004 retrospective at the Tehran Museum of ContemporaryArt. The double curve of the Arabic letter ayn is lodged within alarger curve in an allusion to the name of Ali, the son-in-law of theProphet Muhammad and first caliph recognized in Shiite Islam.In another abstract composition, painted a year later, Goriz besu-ye Nur (“Flight Toward Light”), which hangs in the Visual ArtsCenter in Tehran, turquoise lettering that seems to be ripped intoshreds by a furious tempest dances against a backdrop of swirlinggold with touches of green. Here the letters suggest the namesHasan and Husayn, Ali’s sons, revered as martyrs by Shiites.

In her finest pictures in this style, Mansoureh paints lettersbut does not spell out full names. An untitled composition of1999 is a whirlpool of blue streaks of paint with dashes of whiteand red and very small letters falling through, dispensing somecryptic message. But her true masterpieces are her purely abstractworks with titles implying figuration. The subject, although notdepicted, is hinted at. In Raqsi Chenin (“A Dance Like This”),bands of turquoise and gold twirl around one another, suggestingthe swirling of traditional dancing in northern Iran.

Mansoureh is not the only one in the first generationof Iranian contemporary artists who practices suggestiveabstraction. Sedaghat Jabbari Kalkhoran, who had a different,homegrown training, paints abstract compositions in a palettethat also harks back to the color harmonies of past centuries.

Here, too, a sense of rhythm underlines the permanence of Iranianaesthetics. In a 2006 untitled composition included in a remarkablegroup show held at the Tehran Museum of ContemporaryArt in the autumn of 2006, swaying bands of color bear a strikinganalogy to the flamelike movement of the mythical bird Simorgh’swings as it sweeps across the sky in 16th-century book painting.The trails of intense lapis blue that undulate across a ground ofgold and turquoise create a color harmony that goes back to thedeepest past of Iran, beyond even the founding of the first empirethat unified Iranian lands in 559 b.c.

If Mansoureh’s paintings, exhibited many times in Tehran,might have had some influence on Kalkhoran, no such connectioncan be assumed regarding the other major master of thefirst great generation of contemporary artists whose works bearthe stamp of Iranian aesthetics: Nasser Arasteh. Born in 1942,Arasteh, who graduated from the Tehran Faculty of Fine Artsin 1970, enjoyed no exposure to the West during his formativeyears. As a young artist, he tried his hand at a wide range of styles.He drew preparatory sketches in pen and wash for book illustrationsin a figural style of derivative Western inspiration, designedposters and became extensively involved in magazine layouts.These activities, chiefly dictated by the necessities of life, did notdeter him from his central purpose: painting for art’s sake.

With surprising versatility, Arasteh explored multipleavenues. In the 1969 abstract Kumpuzisiyun (“Composition”),colored crystals with triangular facets tumble over one another.This may reflect an awareness of such Western schools asCubism, Italian Futurism or pre–World War I Russian Rayism.His Rectangular Composition, also of 1969, could be depictinggleaming glass panes in free fall sending back red, yellowand white reflections. The Cubist stylization, associated with astrong sense of movement, and the use of toned colored surfacesplace this picture in a category of its own.

For a while Arasteh hovered over both sides of the borderseparating figuration that veers into abstraction from abstractionwith strong suggestions of figural reality, as if he were trying totranscribe colored dreams. In Bandar (“Harbor”), a 1991 watercolor,fragmented reddish sailboats and their darker reflectionsin the water can still be made out, but in Gardane-ye Heyran(“The Mountain Pass of Amazement”), also done in 1991, fluffyblobs of pink, almond green and blackish brown could be eitherblossoming flowers or leafy trees springing up from an unrealwhite haze. By then, Arasteh was firmly headed to abstractionism.In Tolu (“Sunrise”), a 1987 watercolor, a glaring whiteglobe emerges from dark blue splinters and projects blazing redbeams into one corner—the real world is remote. A year later, awatercolor merely titled Composition reduced the sunrise to aprismatic burst of rays.

Arasteh’s conversion to abstraction did not stop himfrom occasionally indulging in flower still-life painting, sometimesin perfectly figural fashion. The most beautiful arewatercolors tersely done in just a few touches. Laleh (“RedAnemone”), 1995, deals with the oldest theme of Persian poetry:the red flower that blossoms in springtime and is associatedwith the most important Iranian holiday, Nowruz, or New Year,celebrated on March 21.

Iranian themes and aesthetics now possess Arasteh.Around 2000, the painter devised a new abstract style in whicha myriad of small, geometric colored spots—mostly crimson,turquoise and pale almond green—carefully juxtaposed, seem waftedthrough space. These works allhave titles containing the wordsymphony and indeed are suggestiveof certain staccato rhythmsof traditional Iranian music performedon the santoor. The playerof this ancient dulcimer strikeseach key with a mallet to producea crisp, clear sound, muchas Arasteh applies neatly definedcolor touches with the tip of hisbrush. The “Symphonies” varyin rhythm and density of hue. In2006 Arasteh painted some ofhis most lyrical compositions inbrilliant colors borrowed fromthe gemstones most admired inIran: ruby red, lapis lazuli blue andemerald green.

Few others in the first greatgeneration of Iranian contemporaryartists influenced by Iranianaesthetics approach Mansoureh,Kalkhoran or Arasteh in quality. The younger Nasser Palangisometimes does. The autumn 2006 group exhibition containeda painting of his that is as poetic as abstract art everis: Diaphanous scrolls in lapis blue with gold specks unwindin an unreal space suggested with a consummate mastery oftrompe l’oeil effects. An emerald green cypress appears on asmall sheet suspended in midair that curls down at the top andis partly veiled by the semitransparent scrolls. The compositionmay be reminiscent of Magritte, but the overall effect recallsthe varnished marbled paper that covers late 19th-century penboxes, while the cypress bending in the wind is the timeless imageto which Persian poets compare the swaying gait of a youngbeauty passing by. The color scheme of lapis, gold and green ispure Iranian vintage.

A similar spirit, profoundly poetic, can be recognized inthe work of the Gudarzi brothers, who bridge the gap betweenIran’s first generation of great contemporary painters and a newone, also inspired by the Iranian aesthetic legacy, that is nowcoming to maturity. The Gudarzis are thoroughly acquaintednot only with Western artistic practice but also with Western arthistory and its concepts. Mostefa, born in 1960, holds a Ph.D. infigural art from Rennes University, in France, and another in arthistory from the Sorbonne, while Morteza, younger by two years,earned his Ph.D. in England. Morteza is a professional art historianas well as an artist, with a number of published books tohis credit, including The Quest for Identity in the ContemporaryPainting of Iran.

For the 2006 autumn show at the Museum of ContemporaryArt, Mostefa sent a picture that pushes further thanany other the fusion of Iranian tradition with Western influenceconfined here to the technique of oil painting. Stylizedturquoise cypresses and leafy, dark green plane trees cover theleft side of the picture, creating a perspective effect reminiscentof 15th-century book painting. An ill-determined rocky face ofblue-blackish maroon fills the right side. The palette of blues,greens and browns, although in tune with the Iranian tradition,does not imitate the past. The nuances are different, and the tonesare unknown in the art of previous centuries.

The more intellectually oriented Morteza, with hisart historian’s vivid awareness of contemporary Western trends,submitted to the same show an abstract composition that couldeasily be mistaken for the work of an artist from Paris or NewYork except for the palette: white, ultramarine and black shotthrough with slivers of dark red and touches of yellow. Thiscomes close to the harmonies dear to the Iranian eye, the verycolors that Matisse so much admired in Iranian book painting.

The interaction of East and West is reaching a new stagewith the second great generation of contemporary Iranian artistsmarked by the heritage of their ancient culture. The integrationof Western techniques is thorough, and the assimilation of variousstrands of influence complete, leading to a different art thatopens up multiple avenues.

The 40-something Sharareh Salehi, born and bred inTehran, offers a fascinating example of age-old tradition transformedinto 21st-century modernity. As was often the case inearlier times, the artist is also a poet. In her latest phase, Salehicreates abstract compositions in intense, deep colors, thicklyapplied. Lines of gold lettering that are reminiscent of 10th-centuryKufic inscriptions without actually spelling out words rundown an abstract diptych that was shown in 2006 in the LazarArt Gallery, run by Janet Lazarian. In another panel, richly textureddark red and black streams down the vertical format likethe lava of an erupting volcano. In a third, also from 2006, aroll of film seems to have left a fading gray impression across abackground of turquoise and black, creating the effect of moirésilk. Immensely talented and versatile, Salehi is likely to be muchtalked about in coming years, and not just in Iran.

A third generation of younger painters influenced by Iraniantradition, many of them female, is arising. Lazarian handles someof the most promising among these. Niloofar Rahnama, whowas born in 1976 and received a master’s degree from the AzadUniversity in Tehran in 2002, painted in 2006 an untitled compositionin which pale green foliage surges in the foregroundagainst what appears to be a steep mountain wall painted in tonesof red merging into greens and yellows. Tiny trees spring up inthe distance, perched on rocky mounds of a type that exist onlyin dreams. The perspective is rooted in the distant Iranian past,and yet this is very much a picture of our time.

Bita Vakili, who was born in 1973 and received a master’sfrom Tehran Art University, paints abstract pictures in delicatenuances of cold colors. Her brushwork is that of a very greatmaster, and her aptitude at conjuring multiple images is astonishing.I saw some of her paintings at the Lazar Art Gallery. She wasin love with the wind, of 2006, could depict a dark rocky shorebeaten by the frothy surf of a choppy sea seen from a very highaltitude. But it also suggests rain lashed across a glass pane byhurricane winds. Hope, a stunning 2006 masterpiece of crushedcolor applied with the tip of the brush, reminded me of the springthaw on the Damavand mountain, north of Tehran, when themelting snow uncovers expanses of dark purples, green andturquoise. Such compositions, neither really Western nor trulyEastern, except for their capacity to incite dreaming, place Vakiliamong the foremost contemporary artists in the world.

I have not attempted to list all the Iranian artists deservingclose attention. The autumn 2006 shows at the Museumof Contemporary Art and the Lazar Art Gallery included severalother fine painters whose ultramodern compositions in anIranian palette share the intensely poetic atmosphere commonto all great contemporary Iranian art. The name of KeyomarsGhurchiyan, whose abstract canvases were among the mostoriginal on display, should also be noted.

Virtually unknown to the wider international public,these artists have been overlooked beyond Iranian borderslargely because no one has seriously tried to market their workabroad. In the many exhibitions organized by the remarkablyactive Museum of Contemporary Art, no differentiation is evermade between the many imitations of the international contemporarystyle, which vary from the mildly indifferent to theoutright absurd, and the rarer painters who owe their strengthand originality to a sensibility honed over 4,000 years.

Contrary to widespread perception, it is easy to travelinside Iran, where U.S. academics and museum curators continueto go, politics notwithstanding. Whoever gets in first andhas the eye to sort out the greatest from the not-so-great standsto make some real coups.

"Unseen Iran" originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's November 2008 Table of Contents.