Bahman Dadkhah

Bahman Dadkhah is one of the contemporary Iranian illustrators. Although he is best known for his illustrations for children's books, he has also been active in painting and sculpture. In 1966, he graduated with a degree in dentistry from the University of Tehran, but due to his heartfelt interest, he pursued art. From the beginning of the 1960s, he exhibited his works in various galleries of Tehran. His paintings were exhibited in the third and fourth Tehran Biennale. He held his first solo exhibition in 1965 at Ghandriz Hall.
Dadkhah, along with great people such as Parviz Kalantari, Ali Akbar Sadeghi and Noureddin Zarrin Kolak, is one of the leading figures of illustration in the 1960s. He has had many successful collaborations with the “Center of Development of Children's Thought”. His illustrated books were among the best books of the association and won awards in Bologna, Bratislava and other international works. The pictures he created for the books called “Tokai in the Cage '' and "What the Bird Said '' are pure examples of this period of his career, in which images are realistically very subtle and childish.
But in painting, Dadkhah turns to pure abstraction. However, his treatment of pigment is reminiscent of the color quality of his illustrations. His paintings’ backgrounds are full of dark and muted colors that turn black in the final step, and a halo of vivid and bright colors shows itself on the surface. The soft shades of red and purple like fog spread in the space of the frame and give a mysterious and ethereal quality to his paintings.
His sculptures can be divided into two general groups. First group includes slender figures with very small heads and legs that are exaggeratedly long. The bronze surface of these sculptures has a porous and anxious quality. This period of his works is reminiscent of Giacometti sculptures, both in terms of the general shape and in terms of the materials treatments. His figures become more realistic and muscular in the midst of the revolution. The qualities of the plaintiffs in this period are reminiscent of the approach of the "geometry of fear" sculptures – British sculptors in the early second half of the twentieth century tried to represent the human condition of Europe after the two horrifying world wars by arranging, disfiguring, and placing human figures in grotesque postures. His "hostages" have a political and social state in this respect and reflect the inflammatory atmosphere of the revolution years. Dadkhah exhibited a collection of these statues in 2010 called "Hostage" in An gallery.
In the second group of plaintiff sculptures, nature replaces the human body and a kind of poetic optimism replaces the anxious and bitter viewpoint of the past. "Rings of Light" and "Assurance" are the landmark works of this period in which a golden ring with some shape resembling butterfly wings grows on top of a dark pillar.