NOW AND TEN

days, precisely in February 1965, that Parviz Tanavoli initiated the concept of
Heech as a protest against the overuse of calligraphy throughout the works of his
peers afiliated to the Saqqakhaneh school.
Composed of three letters in Persian language, the single word heech means
‘nothing’. It refects the feelings of unworthiness, frustration and inefectiveness,
which haunt modern man and permeate so much of the writing of contemporary
literature. It also renders in a single word the mystical belief that recognises
that God is permanent, while everything else has no true substance, bound to
vanish. Long before Tanavoli, the notion of Heech was explored and studied
by poets including the father of Sufsm, Rumi, but also Khayyam and Hafez.
A philosophical concept that went beyond borders, the core of Heech also
profoundly inspired Western poets and writers including Jean-Paul Sartre who
in 1943 published his famous essay entitled Being and Nothingness, refecting
upon the phenomenological consciousness. While Heech can refer to despair
and absence of being, the Heech in Tanavoli’s works is more nearly synonymous
with creativity itself: it is the void flled by the artist’s imagination, the nothing that
through his carving and shaping becomes something and everything.
Another from the edition of the present work on view in the artist’s frst US
retrospective at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, in 2015.
© Charles Mayer Photography.
Christie’s is proud and delighted to ofer one of the most important and
monumental bronze works, the Heech Lovers, by the Iranian artist Parviz Tanavoli.
An avid collector of ancient Persian artefacts, a scholar, a poet and above all an
internationally celebrated sculptor, Tanavoli is critically acclaimed and widely
acknowledged as the father of Modern Iranian sculpture. Throughout the years,
Tanavoli developed a style that is not only contemporary, but also refects his
Persian heritage. His majestic bronze sculptures and extensive body of works
that include ceramics, prints, paintings, but also jewelry and rugs reveal the
importance and scale of his work from the 1960s to the present day.
Born in 1937, Parviz Tanavoli received his general education in Tehran and later
went to study in Italy where he trained under teachers such as Marino Marini
and was acquainted to European art and culture. He graduated in 1959 from the
Brera Fine Arts Academy in Milan and it was upon his return to his native Iran
that he became profoundly inspired by and passionate about Persian culture and
its aesthetic heritage. He was particularly struck by the urban rituals linked to the
public water houses, in Farsi the Saqqakhaneh, built in bazaars, onto which the
passers-by would make donations by tying up a piece of cloth or hanging locks
hoping for their prayers to become true and hence perceiving these fountains
alike shrines. Soon after his return, Tanavoli instigated the Saqqakhaneh school,
a movement which has changed the course of Iranian art history ever since. Often
referred to as a ‘spiritual pop art’ movement, Saqqakhaneh sought to incorporate
religious symbols into art while refecting the contemporary style and art that
arose at the time in Western art. Tanavoli’s complex lexicon of symbols and motifs
that was established throughout the years in fact fused his traditional heritage
with an utterly contemporary sensibility. At the same time, his artistic practice is
tied to philosophy and spirituality and his works continuously reveal his favoured
and long-standing thematics of the Poet, the Prophet, the Lovers, the Walls, the
Locks and last but defnitely not least the Heech.
When in 1961, the late American philanthropist and collector Abby Weed Grey
visited Iran, she discovered Tanavoli’s studio and was instantly struck by his
works and techniques and invited him to an artistic residence at the Minneapolis
College of Art and Design, where he soon acted as a lecturer and Professor.
In 1964, Tanavoli returned to Tehran to teach at Tehran University’s Fine Arts
Faculty and became one of the closest advisors to Empress Farah Pahlavi as she
was gathering one of the most important collections of art. It was during those
Tanavoli’s signature Heech carries diferent meanings and is materialised in
diferent forms and narratives. He has produced works that explore this notion
in various sizes and materials, from bronze to fbreglass and also more recently
in neon lights and delicate jewelry. Heech can stand alone as a majestic fgure
resembling the contours of a human body; it can be doubled like two fgures
embracing each other with love and passion, as is the case of the monumental
Heech Lovers that is presently ofered in this auction. It can also emerge from a
cage, sit on a chair, lie beneath a table and in all these instances, it essentially
revives simultaneously the core concepts of existence and nothingness while
refecting on the realities of the contemporary society. Heech is abstract,
philosophical, spiritual and at the same time sensuous.
The present work entitled the Heech Lovers, undeniably a piece of museum
quality, is one of his most captivating sculptures ever made. The craftsmanship
and dexterity that are refected through the work reveal the unequalled talent of
Tanavoli, confrming his leading and pioneering role in sculpture and philosophy.
Made of polished bronze, the Heech Lovers stand as a couple delicately
embracing, as if to protect each other from the vanities and excesses of the
outside world. As it combines both the shape of Heech and the idea of Lovers,
the simple abstracted shape of the present sculpture is flled with spirituality and
epitomises ‘the poetry in bronze’ for which Tanavoli is internationally acclaimed.
As it stood at the heart of the Heech garden created on the occasion of the
celebrated retrospective of the artist at the Davis Museum in 2015, Heech Lovers
is perhaps one of Tanavoli’s most complete and delicate interpretations of the
philosophical concept of Heech, around which most of his production was made.
Currently based between Vancouver and Tehran, Parviz Tanavoli is a leading
infuence to a generation of artists who seek to combine their traditional culture
with a sense of modernity. He is the most important and most sought-after
living Iranian artist today whose practice spans over six decades while he is still
adding to his unique body of works, actively creating in his respective Canadian
and Iranian studios. Tanavoli’s career and artistic production have been recently
celebrated internationally through major exhibitions including his frst US
retrospective at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, The World Goes Pop
at the Tate in London and the ongoing exhibition Global/Local 1960-2015: Six
Artists from Iran which opened at the Grey Art Gallery at NYU in January 2016.
His works are held in prestigious private and public collections including the
British Museum and Tate Modern in London, the Metropolitan Museum and the
Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi, the National
Museum of Qatar, the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna and the Tehran Museum
of Contemporary Art.
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