at the Agora Gallery in New York.
Maryam Javanbakht’s paintings, which feature elegant calligraphic poems in the traditional black and white Iranian calligraphy, will be exhibited between January 11 and February 1 at the Agora Gallery in the Chelsea art galleries district.
Her art, which combines mediums of watercolor, gauche, chalk and ink on paper, borrows from classic Iranian poems from the poetry of Molavi, Hafez, Khayyam and Baba Taher.
Separation, longing and reunification are the main symbolic motifs in her work, which brings out the sentiments of sorrow, joy, love and intoxication.
She said her interest in calligraphy began at an early age. “As soon as I started school and learned to read and write, I started to practice and write what I learned in calligraphic script. It was the starting point in my real art history; I discovered something new: It was an application of recently learned Persian letters and words in creative painting. I also started to compete in schools and by the time I was ready to start college, I had earned many first prizes on the national level,” she said.
“I continued to paint and do calligraphy separately until I was accepted into Medical School. Since Medical School required a lot of studying, I only did artwork on the holidays. I put on my first exhibition of my work when I was in the second grade on school grounds, which had a positive effect in continuing my work. It was 2004 when I took part in a registered calligraphy examination. To be qualified as a first-degree calligraphist, one must pass a three-step exam that I took successfully.” she says on her website.
Javanbakht was born in 1978 in Golpayegan. She is currently a practicing physician in Tehran as well as consulting director of a children’s charity association that works to help cure children with congenital malformations.
