Mohammad Fassounaki

Iran | 1943

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Artworks (155)

Exhibitions (41)

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About Mohammad Fassounaki

Mohammad Fassounaki was born on December 17, 1943, in Tabriz. His artistic journey began in 1956 when he entered the Tabriz Conservatory of Music. However, his focus soon shifted toward the visual arts after enrolling at the Tabriz School of Painting under the supervision of the modernist painter Hossein Kazemi. There, Fassounaki studied with artists such as Morteza Ressam Nakhjavani, gaining a strong foundation in classical techniques and Impressionist approaches to color.

He later moved to Germany to continue his studies and, in 1968, enrolled at the State Boarding School of Art in Frankfurt, where he studied under several German instructors. During this period, he became drawn to the works of German Expressionists, whose emotional intensity and sensitivity to color left a lasting influence on him. Toward the end of his studies, he developed an interest in Picasso’s Analytical Cubism, which further shaped his evolving visual language.

After completing his studies in Frankfurt, Fassounaki moved to Italy and, in 1970, entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome to study painting. Two years later, he began studying sculpture at the same institution. Early during his stay in Italy, he participated in two group exhibitions — one in Venice and another at the W. H. S. Hall in Frankfurt.

Fassounaki returned to Iran in 1973 and settled in his hometown of Tabriz. His first solo exhibition was held at the Mirak Art School in 1974. That same year, he presented a solo show of drawings and paintings at Ghandriz Hall in Tehran. In 1975, he exhibited at the Iran–America Society in Tabriz and took part in further exhibitions at the Mirak Art School in Tabriz, as well as Seyhoun Gallery and Tehran Gallery in Tehran.

His return to Iran coincided with a politically and socially charged period in the country, when art was increasingly engaging with social realities. This environment gave Fassounaki’s work a distinctly realist orientation. Ten years later, he moved to West Berlin, where he lived for three years before returning to Iran in 1986. Following his return, his paintings increasingly reflected the everyday social life of Iranian people — a focus that remained central to his practice. Even when he drew on themes from tradition or nature, these motifs often carried symbolic or metaphorical meaning.

Between 1996 and 1999, Fassounaki held several exhibitions in Tehran and Tabriz, expanding his presence in the capital throughout the 2000s. In the early 2000s, he abandoned oil paint in favor of acrylic — a shift that brought brighter colors, fluid textures, and a dripping technique to his canvases, pushing some of his works to the edge of abstraction.