Plaster Mask of Nima Yooshij
Catalog details
- Artist
- Master Jalil Ziapour
- Date
- 1950 (1329 SH)
- Medium
- Plaster
- Collection
- Private collection
Photographed from a printed reproduction. No better image of this work is available; if you have a better photograph of it, please let us know.
Plaster mask of Nima Yooshij’s face, made by Jalil Ziapour with paraffin and plaster, 1950.
In the artist’s words
“At that same time, at the friends’ prior request, I made a mask of Nima’s face with paraffin and plaster, and he was as happy as a child.”
About this work
In 1950, Master Jalil Ziapour, together with two companions of the Fighting Cock (Khoroos Jangi) Association, Gholamhossein Gharib and Hassan Shirvani, was a guest at Nima’s house, and this keepsake took shape during Nima’s lifetime. This mask has sometimes been wrongly called a “death mask,” whereas the closed eyes in this work are merely a requirement of casting in plaster; Nima died nine years after that visit, on 16 Dey 1338 (7 January 1960).
In 1967, the image of this mask appeared on the covers of the first editions of two of Nima’s collections of poems: the full design of the mask on a black ground on the book “Naqus,” and a profile of it on the cover of “Shahr-e Shab, Shahr-e Sobh.”
