Mansoureh Hosseini is one of the pioneers of modern art in Iran. Her gift for painting and poetry was noticed at an early age by her father who hired a painting tutor to develop her skills. She later pursued a formal art education at the University of Tehran’s Faculty of Fine Arts (1944-1948) and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome (1955-1959). M. Hosseini is known as an artist who simultaneously followed both figurative and abstract approaches in line and in relation to each other. Her artistic insight and style were mostly developed by the influential trends found in the Italian art scene during her years in Rome, starting with the Scuola Romana and expressionism, later moving towards abstract and formal application of Kufic calligraphy, influences that continued to inspire her all through her career. M. Hosseini’s 1958 painting Landscape of Rome depicts her poetic take on the prevalent styles of painting in Italy at the time. The simplicity of forms, quality of the colours and her thick application of solid paint express the lyrical adaptation of an expressionist approach that can be traced back to the early works of Mario Mafai (1902-1965).

A pivotal meeting with the art critic Lionello Venturi during her last year in Rome, which included a discussion about the possible use of Kufic script in painting, was key in her pioneering role in popularising the use of traditional Persian and Arabic calligraphy in modern painting, a trend further proliferated by the Saqqa-khaneh Movement artists such as Parviz Tanavoli (b. 1937) and Charles Hossein Zenderoudi (b. 1937). The artist’s calligraphy-inspired paintings also drew on her figurative background and embodied the same vibrancy of colours that outshines the linear value of forms. With In Memory of An Epic (1974), abstract signs, Kufic elements and angular lines appear to float between a sea of light and a cavern of darkness. The repetition of abstract signs reveals her expressive treatment of these lines as actual forms.

In addition to her artistic career, she was one of the first Iranian artists to write art criticism, initially writing critical articles for the newspaper Ettela’at in 1967 under the pseudonym “Dr Asad”, and later writing for Kayhan under her real name.

In the late 1960s she began teaching art criticism at the University of Tehran’s Faculty of Fine Arts. Meanwhile, she continued to develop both her artistic practice and writing career, publishing Muddy Boots (1971), an autobiographical story that begins and ends with a woman’s gaze into a mirror. She also opened a gallery space in Tehran, the Mansoureh Hosseini Gallery, in 1973, where she hosted a programme that exhibited work by fellow artists as well as her own work.

M. Hosseini received various awards, scholarships and commissions throughout her career. Her work was exhibited at various national and international exhibitions and biennales, including the 28th Venice Biennale (1956), the Tehran Painting Biennale (1958 to 1966) and the 4th Iranian Painting Biennale (1997). Apart from the curated shows that canonised her as a pioneer of Iranian modern art, her works were showcased in two major retrospectives in Tehran in 1977 (Azad Art Gallery) and 1998 (Niavaran Cultural Center). M. Hosseini continued to work and develop her career as well as hosting exhibitions at her gallery until the final years of her life. She passed away in June 2012 in Tehran.