"I started reading the Shahnameh, or Book of Kings, after the revolution. I guess I was desperately looking for something I could relate to. I wasn’t a Muslim, so I couldn’t identify with the Islamic side. I was not a Republican, so I couldn’t identify with the Republic. I had to find something that I could identify with, and I suppose that ended up being ancient Iranian mythology." Fereydoun Ave, in an interview with the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Fereydoun Ave (b. 1945, Tehran) is an influential Iranian artist, curator, and cultural figure whose multifaceted practice spans painting, collage, photography, assemblage, textiles, set design, and curatorial work. Educated in England and the United States, Ave earned a BA in Applied Arts for Theatre from Arizona State University and studied film at NYU before returning to Tehran in 1970, just as the city’s cultural scene was flourishing.
His work moves fluidly between abstraction and figuration, rooted in mythology, history, and the personal. Ave draws on a wide range of references—from Iranian wrestling and heroes of the 10th-century Shahnameh, to Greek mythology and contemporary allegory. “I’m a collage myself,” he once said, capturing the essence of an artistic language where painterly gestures, repetition, calligraphic lines, and found objects all coexist.
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Syros -
Shells, 1985 and 2018
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No More Seashells on the Seashore, 1990 and 2009
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Seychelles, 1990 and 2013
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No More Seashells on the Seashore, 1990 and 2013
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No More Seashells on the Seashore, 1990, 2004 and 2013
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No More Seashells on the Seashore, 1990, 2004 and 2013
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Seychelles (Melting World of Emotions), 1991 and 2013
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D'Arros, Seashells, 1995 and 2025
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Twigs, 1999
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Twigs, 1999
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No More Seashells on the Seashore, 1999 and 2013
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No More Seashells on the Seashore, 1999 and 2013
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No More Seashells on the Seashore, 1999 and 2013
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D'Arros, Seychelles , 1999 and 2013
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The Fig & the Fig Leaf, 2008
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The Fig & the Fig Leaf, 2008
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Fig and the Fig Leaf, 2008
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Fig and the Fig Leaf, 2008
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Rostam in the Dead of Winter, 2009
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Rostam in the Dead of Winter, 2009
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Poppies and Artichokes , 2013
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Mushroom, 2016
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Trompette de la Mort, 2024
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Trompette de la Mort, 2024
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Trompette de la Mort, 2024
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Trompette de la Mort, 2024
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Trompette de la Mort, 2024
