Sabzi bio

Sabzi's subjects are almost always women, beautiful, graceful, taciturn and lugubrious, they reflect solitude. His women are Madonna's, modern goddesses, and martyred saints whose elongated forms suggest instability and internal conflict. Their anonymous faces transform them into religious icons that transcend and defy the demands of reality. Yet, other paintings reflect warmth, charm, gayety, happiness, and his undisputed love and admiration for women.

Sabzi's paintings resonate both eastern and western philosophies. His rich Persian heritage provides him with ancient images and sentimental Persian themes and memories of innocence. The Western source of influence comes from one of the most creative moments of modernism of Cezanne and Matisse.

Sabzi's debt to modernism, especially Matisse, is irrefutable. His earthy hues of pale greens, yellows, purples and reds illuminate the settings and inspire the forms with unique inner vibrations. The treatment of the human face as luminous geometric planes, though schematic, is nevertheless a profound statement of the artist's quest for spirituality.

Sabzi goes beyond Matisse and creates spatially revolving worlds that are post-modern. Reflections of images in mirrors, for example, are emotionally breath taking, assuming a life of their own. The effect is a powerful attempt at multiplicity of emotional representation. Here the fantastic is treated as ordinary and the rich fabrics of the paintings assume intimate unveilings.

Sabzi acknowledges in his paintings the historical, stylistic or cultural. The sheer luminosity of his spaces contrasting sharply with the somber moods of his figures appear at first to be contrary but soon protent to be valid and potent to the viewer.