Inventor of Iranian Expressionism

By Alireza Bahrami

TEHRAN: He was the last child of an important landowner in northern Iran. In a green area near the Caspian Sea. But the Shah of Iran took his father’s lands by force. So, he lived in poverty as a teenager. Before the 1979 Iranian revolution, he was active in a political group. These political activities created problems for him.

After the revolution, he lived a poor life, maybe because he was always painting or writing a novel.

He says: I was not successful in my married life and I fought depression by painting in my small house. I hope one day the value of my paintings will be understood.

Farzin Fakhr Yasri is now 70 years old. He has a strange destiny. He was the thirteenth child of the family. He says, all my brothers and sisters died. They did not live long.

After the revolution and during the war, he went to the war front for 6 months and defended his homeland. Before that, he was admitted to the University of Arts, but due to poverty, he had to work as a laborer. He did not go to art school.

Fakhr Yasri, who is a sad and quiet man, has followed a principle in his paintings. He paints the hidden and hidden joys of ordinary people. Laughter and happiness are present in all his paintings.

His paintings are known as Impressionism with a tendency towards Fauvism.

But he himself says, “I am a painter with the spirit of flying birds who want to create modernism in the manner of Iranian painters; Expression in the Iranian way”.