“Thematically, he expands on the subjects already evident in his painting in the late 1960s, with frequent mythical references (faun, Leda, Minotaur, warrior, etc.). His sculpture is therefore, essentially figurative, yet markedly expressionistic in the elongation and thinning of the images, often intertwined, in a movement of sculptural rhythms elegantly articulated in space, sometimes in ways explicitly reminiscent of dance (and this is the direct mythical reference point), involving images that are both human and animal or vegetable in nature.”

—Enrico Crispolti

Iranian-born artist Bahman Mohasses was one of the pioneering modern masters of the 20^th Century, a poet, painter and sculptor whose works reflect his reclusive character and self-imposed exile in Italy. Born in the City of Rasht, Iran, in 1931, he painted throughout his childhood before attending the Tehran University Faculty of Fine Arts. Working across a range of media, pursuing theatre direction and poetry translation concurrently to sculpture and painting, Mohasses quickly became a central figure in Tehran’s avant-garde, editing a weekly art and literary publication and joining one of the city’s established cultural societies. However, what distinguished his oeuvre from his contemporaries’ is the multiplicity of cultural influences it bears. After he moved to Italy in 1954, then aged 23, to study at the Fine Art Academy of Rome, his already distinctive style reached a unique level of synthesis, fusing Middle Eastern and Western approaches to visual representation. Testament to his importance, he participated in a number of Biennales, Venice (1956-1958), São Paolo (1962) and Paris (1962), with his works shown in solo and group exhibitions globally, from Rome and Milan to Beirut and Tehran.

Despite this early success, the 1979 Iranian Revolution forced him to permanently leave his birth country behind. The new state regime censored his art and many of his public sculptures were destroyed, impelling him to move permanently to Italy in a state of semi-exile. Bronze with Bird, executed in 1978 just before this traumatic turning point in his career and life, is inflected by a sense of poignancy and reflects his longstanding interest in the intersections of nature, mythology and art history, tinged by Mohasses’ powerful humanistic impulse.