TEHRAN – The fifth exhibition in the “Art & War” series, titled “Iranian Epic Painting: From the Shahnameh to Ashura,” is underway at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA). 

The exhibition, including works from the museum’s treasured collection, offers a fresh perspective on the long-standing tradition of epic painting in Iran. It presents significant works from the country's two major epic traditions: Ferdowsi’s “Shahnameh” and the events of the Day of Ashura, IRNA reported.

The exhibition features twelve outstanding paintings by renowned masters of the Coffeehouse Painting (an Iranian genre of narrative painting) tradition, including Mohammad Modabber, Abbas Boloukifar, Ahmad Khalili, Hossein Hamedani, Ali-Akbar Lerni, Mohammad Farahani, Hassan Esmaeilzadeh, and Reza Hamidi.

Salar Rafieian, a curator at the TMoCA, writes in a note about the exhibition that Iranian epic painting, particularly in the form of Coffeehouse Painting, should not be viewed merely as religious, epic, or folk paintings.

Rather, these works constitute a popular visual medium for recreating collective memory and sustaining a pictorial tradition that stretches from Mani’s “Arzhang” through Persian miniature painting, Shi'a iconography, and the tradition of Naqqali (Persian storytelling performance).

In their works, the heroes of the Shahnameh and the martyrs of Karbala, on the Day of Ashura, stand alongside one another as parts of a shared ethical memory, one that constantly invites society to reflect upon its relationship with the true nature of power and responsibility.

Iranian visual storytelling in these paintings emerges through the interplay of dependent and independent motifs. As a result, these paintings are not static images, but rather living maps of an entire cosmos, where history, mythology, nature, and the supernatural coexist simultaneously.

Here, art is not simply a means of depicting the world but a means of imagining a more impartial one, where the image itself becomes the shared language of memory, justice, and resistance.

The “Art & War” program provides a unique opportunity to revisit and analyze how wars influence the formation of different art movements.

The exhibition has been planned as an artistic reaction to the 40-day American-Zionist assault on Iran (from February 28 to April 8), which martyred about 3,500 people, including the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, several officials and military commanders, as well as numerous civilians, including women and children.

During the 40-day war (also known as the Ramadan War), besides some military targets, the US and Israel launched organized attacks against civilian infrastructure, including residential homes, hospitals, refineries, power plants, schools, universities, art and cultural spaces, bookstores, museums, and ancient sites in several cities, causing total or partial damage and injuring innocent people.

Through the “Art & War” program, the TMoCA has made some treasured works available to audiences, so that with each visit, they can gain deeper insight into the impact of art when confronting historical and contemporary crises.

Established in 1977, the museum has more than 4,000 items that include 19th and 20th-century world-class Iranian, European, and American paintings, prints, drawings, and sculptures. Being the biggest collection of Western art in the eastern world, it includes works from almost all artistic periods and movements.

Most of the museum area is located underground with a circular walkway that spirals downwards with galleries branching outwards. Western sculptures by artists such as Ernst, Giacometti, Magritte, and Moore can be found in the museum's gardens.

“Iranian Epic Painting: From the Shahnameh to Ashura” opened on June 23 at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and will remain open to visitors until July 3.

SS/SAB