Jalil Ziapour

Jalil Ziapour (1920–1999) was an Iranian painter, academician, researcher, and writer.

He is considered to be the "father of modern Iranian painting".

Besides having been a leading painter and the head of the Futuristic movement, he has had many research activities in the fields of anthropology, study and familiarization with language, public culture, clothing and decorative designs of different regions of Iran, and their results are currently used in universities as reference books.

During his cultural and artistic activity, Ziapour has performed giving more than 85 lectures, presenting more than 70 cultural and artistic articles, writing more than 28 books in the fields of Iranian clothing, art and history and also creating about 40 paintings and two statues.

He was one of the founders of the Fighting Cock Society, an arts association.

Jalil Ziapour was born in 1920 in Bandar-e Anzali, Qajar Iran.

His childhood hobbies were forming statues from Anzali marshes mud and listening to music.

He began his art studies since youth.

After finishing primary education, he went to Tehran in 1938 and entered the Music School, which was directed by Mr. Minbashian then, for composing and passed the entrance tests; but at that time, the foreign professors of the school returned to their home countries and he was not able to follow his agenda.

Therefore, he started studying and familiarizing with traditional arts in the School of Fine Arts at Tehran University (now University of Tehran).

In 1941, he entered the Beautiful Arts School.

The first period of the school (1941–1945) announced three graduates in painting and Ziapour received the first place and the first class cultural medal from the school and headed to France by the scholarship presented by that country's government and continued studying in École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in visual arts field.

In 1948, he returned to Iran, alongside other Iranian academy painters included Javad Hamidi, Shokouh Riazi, Ahmad Esfandiari, and Hossein Kazemi.

Together they established for the first time activity in the field of contemporary painting in Iran.

Ziapour presented his art theory and view as a thesis titled "Refute of the Theories of Past and Contemporary Ideologies from Primitive to Surrealism" in October 1948 to cultural and journal societies; and in it, after presenting a short history of Occidental art ideologies, he considered all those ideologies ineffective for the main goal of painting and stated most of them as covers for supplying things other than painting.

By that thesis, he became very close to the definition of single and abstract painting and looked at the material of modern painting, whose cleansing from literary, historical, social and so on is necessary in order to achieve an independent function of color, line, light and creative compositions.

The general conclusions stated in the theory are:

Ziapour's works are famous because of possessing original Iranian concepts, simplification of figures, loyalty to the traditional levels along with geometric lines of cubism, awareness of composition and generally the special style of painting.

His research trip to Kavir and various Iranian regions for anthropological inspections, guided his attention towards nomadic lifestyle.

He saw their behaviors, customs and traditions, clothes and adornments worth noticing and utilized those resources in his works and because of his research inclination toward farming lifestyle, nomadic concepts appeared in his works in an allegorical way.

Journalistic illustrations, researches on Iran and cultural and educational activities left him less time for creating more works.

In 1949, Ziapour established the artistic board "Fighting Cock", which was a leading committee in the field of modern arts in literature, theater, music and painting, and started printing a magazine with the same name with his proponents and presented his theory about visual arts (painting) called "Refute of the Theories of Past and Contemporary Ideologies -from Primitive to Surrealism".

During his artistic activity as a painter, he was always considered as the leader of futurism and the developer of modern art and is the initiator of artistic criticism in Iran.

Ziapour contended in four fronts: the followers of past methods, the degenerate modernists who had returned from abroad, the mass traditionalists, the followers of the old European method.

His effort was to preserve the Iranian identity by leaning on the capacity of native culture, but speak by a global tongue and present it and eventually bring honor to his Iranian culture.

After his first return to Iran (1949), he founded the artistic society of Fighting Cock, which was a leading society in the fields of modern art about literature, theater, music and painting, and also started printing a magazine with the same name.

The location of the society was the Ziapour Atelier at the Takht-e Jamshid Avenue.

He announced the goal of the Fighting Cock Society "Contending Conservatism and Traditionalism far from the Realities of the Time".

Eventually, the opponents, who had introduced the Fighting Cock Magazine a publication associated with the Tudeh Party and believed cubism equal to communism, caused Ziapour's interrogation at the Official Misdemeanors Court and the banning of the magazine in 1949.

Then be published another magazine titled "Kavir", which was also banned, and then continued reflecting his thoughts at the publication "Claw of Cock".

In 1951, Ziapour founded the School of Decorative Arts for Boys (Persian: Honarestān-e honarhā-ye zibā-ye pesarān) in Tehran.

In 1952, he was offered a job from the National General Agency of Beautiful Arts and performed many cultural-artistic activities, jobs and missions like founding the female and male high schools for visual arts, decorative arts school, dean of anthropology museum, etc. In 1979, he retired from public service and since then until his final days of life, he performed research, writing and teaching at the schools of dramatic and decorative arts, Islamic Art Collective, Tarbiat Modares and Al-Zahra Universities.

At 79 years of age, Ziapour died at the Tus hospital of Tehran on Tuesday, December 21, 1999, as a result of heart failure after spending a difficult period of disease, and two days later on December 23, he was buried at the artists section of Behesht-e Zahra.