“Leyly Matine Daftary was an Iranian modernist painter. Regardless of the subject, this artist has always depicted simple shapes and flat colors in a simple formalistic way.“
Leyly Matine Daftary (1936-2007) was an Iranian modernist painter. Regardless of the subject, this artist has always depicted simple shapes and flat colors in a simple formalistic way. In general, her paintings can be thematically divided into several including still lives, portraits and figures, and plant paintings.
Leyly Matine Daftary was born in Tehran, she went to England as a child, and studied painting and sculpture in London. She returned to Iran in 1960 and started teaching at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran for five years. Along with other artists such as Behjat Sadr and Shokuh Riazi, she is one of the most important female modernist artists in Iran.
“Leyly Matine Daftary was an Iranian modernist painter. Regardless of the subject, this artist has always depicted simple shapes and flat colors in a simple formalistic way.“
Leyly Matine Daftary's paintings show a successful combination of her introverted spirit, the structural features of Eastern art, and the influences of her contemporary art in Europe; the strength and balance of composition along with broken perspective, flat colors, the interaction between negative and positive spaces, and the removal of elements of dimension and depth can be considered as reminiscents of Iranian Miniature.
After returning to Iran, Leyly Matine Daftary presented her works in the second, third, and fifth editions of the Biennial of Tehran and several solo and group shows in Iran and other countries. Leyly Matine Daftary's first solo show was held in 1966 in Borghese Gallery in Tehran. In the same year, she won the prize of the fifth edition of the Biennial of Tehran. She had taught sculpture at the University of Tehran before the 1979 Revolution; then shewent to Paris and breathed her last there in 2007.
Leyly Matine Daftary's works have been displayed many times after her death and have been sold in international auctions. In 2016, a solo exhibition of Leyly Matine Daftary's works was held at Emkan Gallery.
In recent years, many group exhibitions, including "A Visual Dialog" at Dastan +2 Gallery, which presented the portrait and still lives of Leyly Matine Daftary and Manoucher Yektai, "Fifty-Year" at Seyhoun Gallery, "A Rare Collection of Iranian Modern Art" at Leila Heller Gallery, and "Mirrored Reflections" at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art which hosted some of the most important works of the artist.
