of the very first tehran biennale in 1958. he has explored local idioms and nuances, and his portrayal on these flat washes of colour of a woman emerging from a bathhouse in downtown tehran, looking at you sideways, really exemplifies the kind of exploration that artists were interested in doing then. the incredible thing is that there is this misnomer in western art history that modernism was something that was invented in the west, and then exported like a good around the world. whereas, in fact, in the kind of transnational modernisms that are being explored now, we re understand the story differently. and it s great to have this moment to establish the huge variety of modernism within iran