Khosrow Hassanzadeh, the Iranian painter, has died after drinking bootleg alcohol. Hassanzadeh was a pioneer of Iranian Pop art, his screenprints, ceramic tiles and box frame assemblages featuring working class heroes, including wrestlers and the iconic musicians such as Javad and Googoosh.
While other Iranian artists hailed from the western facing elite, Hassanzadeh was a member of a local militia during the revolution and went on to fight in the Iraq-Iran war, experiences that gave his work a political nuance. The Terrorists series featured portraits of himself and his female relatives, printed against a background of Islamist motifs, a pointed rebuke to Western prejudice. Prostitutes, another series of prints, related the murder of several sex workers by a religious extremist, while Chador reimagined the veil.
Since the 1980s he exhibited internationally at galleries and institutions in Beirut, Dubai, London, Phnom Penh, and Tehran, before the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam staged a survey in 2006. His work is held in the Dutch institution’s collection, as well as having been bought by the British Museum, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and the World Bank. Hassanzadeh’s most recent show was last year at Vida Heydari Contemporary, Pune, India, where he showed a series of autobiographical poetry paintings.
