TEHRAN -- Iranian painter Bahram Dabiri has little patience for artistic conformity. In a wide-ranging interview with IRNA, the Tehran-based artist challenges the legacy of the Saqqakhaneh movement, laments the neglect of traditional coffeehouse painting and argues that genuine artistic identity emerges through historical knowledge, imagination and individual vision.
Born in Shiraz in 1950, Dabiri studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran, entering in 1970, when he encountered an unusually vibrant intellectual environment. His teachers and contemporaries included influential artists such as Hannibal Alkhas and Mohsen Vaziri-Moghaddam, while composer Muhammad Reza Lotfi played music on campus stairs.
Dabiri remembers those years as a period of experimentation and restless inquiry. Life at the university changed dramatically after 1974, he says, as political tensions displaced the playful exchanges and artistic exploration that had animated the campus.
Dabiri disputes the conventional understanding of Saqqakhaneh as a lasting artistic movement. Emerging in the late 1950s and 1960s, the movement brought traditional Iranian visual elements, religious symbolism and calligraphy into dialogue with modernist art.
He interprets it instead as a form of Iranian Pop Art, a response to the international influence of American popular culture. In his view, its commercial success and continued appeal have encouraged repetition, leaving some contemporary artists attached to familiar formulas rather than developing independent visual languages.
His more impassioned defense is reserved for coffeehouse painting, a popular narrative tradition in which artists depicted epic poetry, religious stories and legendary heroes.
These painters, many without formal academic training, possessed what Dabiri describes as extraordinary imagination, expressive freedom and an instinct for storytelling. Yet, he argues, they remained neglected, with many dying in poverty and obscurity before the 1979 Revolution.
Their marginalization represents a broader failure to recognize the depth of Iran’s artistic inheritance, he suggests.
For Dabiri, Iranian modernity cannot be understood simply through imported artistic styles or decorative references to national heritage. It requires a transformation in how artists see and interpret the world.
He finds a decisive parallel in Nima Yushij, the poet widely regarded as the founder of modern Persian poetry. By breaking with established poetic conventions, Nima transformed the possibilities of literary expression and opened new horizons for Iranian culture.
Dabiri sees a comparable responsibility across painting, literature, music and cinema: artists must absorb their traditions while finding genuinely new ways to express them.
Iranian identity, he cautions, cannot be reduced to familiar motifs such as the boteh-jegheh, or paisley pattern. It emerges through a deeper engagement with history, from Persepolis to the paintings of Reza Abbasi, rather than the superficial reproduction of recognizable symbols.
Despite his criticism of contemporary art institutions and commercial galleries, Dabiri remains optimistic about younger generations. He sees greater freedom in their clothing, behavior and outlook, interpreting these changes as signs of a broader cultural transformation.
His assessment of Iranian cinema is less generous. He praises filmmakers including Bahram Beyzaie, Nasser Taghvai, Sohrab Shahid-Sales and Amir Naderi, while lamenting the marginalization or departure of important artists and the prevalence of what he considers formulaic entertainment.
Ultimately, Dabiri returns to the conviction that sustains his own practice: “I know the world through my eyes.”
For him, artistic achievement depends not on fashionable labels or commercial recognition, but on the capacity to see, imagine and create independently.