The Late Ali Golestaneh

Ali Golestaneh (b. 1941) is best known for his paintings and drawings of natural landscapes, urban textures, and portraits. For more than six decades, he has been creating paintings, drawings, and graphics in his own way. Golestaneh experimented with various colors and materials such as pencil, watercolor, and oil to make his paintings. In the process of simplifying the forms, his works are close to the abstract approach.

As a teenager, Golestaneh studied painting under Aliasghar Petgar's tutelage. He was a classmate of Aydin Aghdashloo and Abbas Kiarostami at Jam Gholhak High School. After finishing high school in 1960, all three of them continued their education at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran.

During university, he learned the basics of oil painting from his teacher, Ali Mohammad Heydarian. After changes were made in the curriculum and management of the faculty, Golestaneh, Aghdashloo, and Pakbaz went to Behjat Sadr's studio to learn painting under her supervision. In 1966, Aghdashloo and Shamim Bahar, who were both close friends of Golestaneh, headed the literature and art section of the Andisheh va Honar magazine. Golestaneh also joined this group, and through this, he got acquainted and cooperated with many intellectuals of that time, such as Karim Emami, Sirous Tahbaz, Ahmadreza Ahmadi, Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, Ahmad Shamloo, etc. He designed portraits of many of these people for the magazine. He also collaborated with the Ziba advertising center during these years. Golestaneh's association with intellectuals of his age gave him a different perspective on the dominant artistic current of the time. He focused on deep human concepts such as life and death, love, man's relationship with nature, and so on.

In 1969, Golestaneh quit his job and education and traveled to Europe; he settled in London and went to the London Printing School. He practiced pencil painting seriously by carefully examining the works of Western painters at museums. He worked as a designer and illustrator for the Royal Car Club's magazine and created graphic works during this time. Graphic works also influenced his painting style. As he said: "Graphic works have given me some elegance and to some extent taken away roughness and violence from my works; some softness of the hand has been added to the roughness of the mind."

Golestaneh returned to Iran in 1973 and graduated from the university. In 1977, he presented a collection of his pencils and crayons in a show called "34 Landscapes" at the Shahr Gallery. After that, he gradually turned to semi-abstract paintings of nature. He also changed his technique and used a spatula to apply a thick color on the canvas during this time. Golestaneh traveled to Spain in 1979; he lived on the island of Ibiza for seven years, during which time he focused on painting nature and farm workers. Due to his living conditions, he had to go for the most inexpensive painting tools; so he turned to watercolor and pencil painting. He exhibited his works in several solo and group exhibitions in Spain during these years.

Golestaneh returned to Iran in 1987 and settled in Tehran. In Iran, he also continued painting with watercolors and pencils. As the situation in Tehran deteriorated during the war, he traveled to Yazd and painted the historical context of the city and the surrounding villages. After the war, he returned to Tehran and painted the neighborhoods of this city. He was very interested in landscape painting and the experience of creating nature, he also was able to depict well the difference in climate in his paintings. In 1988, he held a solo show entitled "Recent Watercolors" at Golestan Gallery.

The unrest of the war years was also reflected in Golestaneh's works. In addition to the emergence of violence in the use of pencils, issues such as disabled people from war or cemeteries also found their way into his works. However, he continued to paint landscapes and nature and became proficient in this work. In addition to the landscape, he also paid a lot of attention to portrait painting; thus, he created portraits of his friends and relatives, such as Forough Farrokhzad and Lily Golestan, with his personal perception.

From the early nineties, Golestaneh gradually turned to oil painting. He achieved his personal use of color, which resulted from combining colors and the creation of mixed colors. Golestaneh's works were exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions during the nineties and 2000s. In 2003, an exhibition called "A Retrospective" was held at the Iranian Artist Forum.

Golestaneh focused on the city of Tehran and its developments in the 2010s. Golestaneh's "Tehran" collection mainly includes designs with markers and is primarily rooted in his and his contemporaries' memories of Tehran in the forties and fifties. In 2012, an exhibition by the artist called "painting on paper" was held at the Maryam Fasihi Harandi Gallery. In 2015, this gallery exhibited the show called "Color Pencil Drawings on Paper 1980-1990" by Golestaneh and presented his works in 2016 at the Koelnmesse art fair. Finally, this great artist passed away on 6 October 2021 due to the Coronavirus.