A third generation of younger painters influenced by Iranian tradition, many of them female, is arising. Lazarian handles some of the most promising among these. Niloofar Rahnama, who was born in 1976 and received a master’s degree from the Azad University in Tehran in 2002, painted in 2006 an untitled composition in which pale green foliage surges in the foreground against what appears to be a steep mountain wall painted in tones of red merging into greens and yellows. Tiny trees spring up in the distance, perched on rocky mounds of a type that exist only in 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’s from Tehran Art University, paints abstract pictures in delicate nuances of cold colors. Her brushwork is that of a very great master, and her aptitude at conjuring multiple images is astonishing. I saw some of her paintings at the Lazar Art Gallery. She was in love with the wind, of 2006, could depict a dark rocky shore beaten by the frothy surf of a choppy sea seen from a very high altitude. But it also suggests rain lashed across a glass pane by hurricane winds. Hope, a stunning 2006 masterpiece of crushed color applied with the tip of the brush, reminded me of the spring thaw on the Damavand mountain, north of Tehran, when the melting snow uncovers expanses of dark purples, green and turquoise. Such compositions, neither really Western nor truly Eastern, except for their capacity to incite dreaming, place Vakili among the foremost contemporary artists in the world.

I have not attempted to list all the Iranian artists deserving close attention. The autumn 2006 shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Lazar Art Gallery included several other fine painters whose ultramodern compositions in an Iranian palette share the intensely poetic atmosphere common to all great contemporary Iranian art. The name of Keyomars Ghurchiyan, whose abstract canvases were among the most original on display, should also be noted.

Virtually unknown to the wider international public, these artists have been overlooked beyond Iranian borders largely because no one has seriously tried to market their work abroad. In the many exhibitions organized by the remarkably active Museum of Contemporary Art, no differentiation is ever made between the many imitations of the international contemporary style, which vary from the mildly indifferent to the outright absurd, and the rarer painters who owe their strength and originality to a sensibility honed over 4,000 years.

Contrary to widespread perception, it is easy to travel inside Iran, where U.S. academics and museum curators continue to go, politics notwithstanding. Whoever gets in first and has the eye to sort out the greatest from the not-so-great stands to 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.