by — 15 June 2026 in 
This year’s Yalda marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the passing of the father of modern Iranian painting, Master Jalil Ziapour — born on 25 April 1920 and gone from among us on 21 December 1999, in the last breaths of autumn, on the threshold of the longest night of the year.
Yet this falling silent was the beginning of his immortality in the soul of this land’s art. In an age when the union of tradition and innovation seemed so hard, with a brush full of insight and daring he opened a new road in Iranian art. The strokes of his brush wove the voice of this land’s ancient cultural veins together with the cadence of a modern vision, and sowed the seeds of a new way of seeing in the raw soil of the canvas. Today the trace of his thought is felt in the work of contemporary artists, and the identity he gave to modern Iranian painting is a lamp that is not put out even on the darkest of nights.
Each year, as Yalda draws near, his empty place shows all the more vividly; yet this very void is a sign of how he endures in the memory of our national art. He has gone, but the colours and lines he left behind flow like veins of life through the very weave of Iranian art. May his memory be honoured, his name eternal, and his path forever a wellspring of inspiration.
Mahsha Ziapour
December 2024
