Empress Farah Pahlavi and Andy Warhol in 1977 at The TMOCA – DR
Last February, we visited the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art: The TMOCA, as we call it is right in the center of Tehran and has been built by Empress Farah Diba in order to exhibit an amazing collection of Westerns artists. Since the Islamic Revolution, all theses remarkable artworks have been hidden in the Museum’s basement. But finally, in 2015, these unique pieces re-emerge for the very best!
The Museum is an unusual place : under the roof you’ll find a very surprising and quiet famous round gallery, reminding us the Persian version of Frank Lloyd Wright’s ramp for The Guggenheim in New York.
The Ramp at TMOCA – photo by Parysatis Peymani
But many other things will surprise you in this labyrinthique museum. Visitors can admire Andy Warhol’s artworks, Mark Rothko but also a famous Roy Lichtenstein beyond many other great and famous artists. Outside the museum, you can have a walk between a Giacometti or a Magritte (the famous “Thérapeute”) and they look younger as ever.
Giacometti at The TMOCA – photo by Parysatis Peymani
A surprising contrast for foreign visitors discovering such a Western exhibition at the heart of Tehran.
Courtesy of The TMOCA – Vanity Fair Left Marc Rothko, Right Andy Warhol
Jackson Pollock at the TMOCA – Photo by Bahare Asadi
Beside these legendary works, we’ll find the ephemeral exhibition of Farideh Lashai, a multi-faceted artist with kind of indecent relation to art who expose her life’s memories as if the visitors were intimates. Some original copies of her school reports stand there, right beside her great artworks.
Farideh Lashai, courtesy of the TOCMA
Farideh Lashai, Self Portrait 1986
Farideh Lashai, courtesy of the TOCMA
Good news if you can’t go to Iran right now, the exhibition will fly to Berlin and Milan in March and April: 60 paintings including 30 from Eastern artists. Since we don’t know yet the selection, we hope that Picasso and Kandinsky will be there.
Read also >> Vanity Fair, A historic exhibition at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
Don’t miss The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art next time in Tehran!