Manoucher Yektai
Untitled, 1989
Oil on canvas
42 x 50 inches
Signed and dated "Yektai 89" lower right
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by Nico Yektai and Darius Yektai as reference number MY1028P. Born in 1921 in Tehran, Iran, Manoucher Yektai...
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by Nico Yektai and Darius Yektai as reference number MY1028P.
Born in 1921 in Tehran, Iran, Manoucher Yektai declared himself a painter at the age of 18. In 1944, he traveled to Paris to study art before relocating to New York the following year as a result of the war. There, he met the dealer Leo Castelli, who, impressed by his work, introduced him to many of the leading artists of the Abstract Expressionist movement, of which Yektai would become an important figure. Despite his close association with the movement, he instead described himself as "some kind of Action Painter." Yektai was the first Iranian artist to embrace this new approach to painting. He developed close friendships with and frequently exhibited alongside Mark Rothko, Mark Tobey, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Motherwell.
This work, like many of Yektai's paintings, demonstrates his distinctive use of thick impasto and a visual language that balances abstraction and figuration. In Untitled, green forms rise above a pale field, evoking trees along a distant horizon while remaining intentionally ambiguous.
Yektai died in Sagaponack, New York, in 2019. Today, his work is represented in the collections of major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, as well as in numerous private collections.
Born in 1921 in Tehran, Iran, Manoucher Yektai declared himself a painter at the age of 18. In 1944, he traveled to Paris to study art before relocating to New York the following year as a result of the war. There, he met the dealer Leo Castelli, who, impressed by his work, introduced him to many of the leading artists of the Abstract Expressionist movement, of which Yektai would become an important figure. Despite his close association with the movement, he instead described himself as "some kind of Action Painter." Yektai was the first Iranian artist to embrace this new approach to painting. He developed close friendships with and frequently exhibited alongside Mark Rothko, Mark Tobey, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Motherwell.
This work, like many of Yektai's paintings, demonstrates his distinctive use of thick impasto and a visual language that balances abstraction and figuration. In Untitled, green forms rise above a pale field, evoking trees along a distant horizon while remaining intentionally ambiguous.
Yektai died in Sagaponack, New York, in 2019. Today, his work is represented in the collections of major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, as well as in numerous private collections.
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