Mehdi Saeedi is an internationally renowned artist and designer. His aesthetics have become a mainstay of design in many regions, especially in those using the Arabic and Iranian scripts as their alphabet.
Born in Tehran, Iran in 1979, Saeedi was educated and trained at Tehran’s Malekeh Ashtar school of graphic design, at Tehran University’s Faculty of Fine Arts and at the University of Cambridge.
Mehdi Saeedi is emblematic of Iran’s prominence and regional dominance in photography, graphic design and poster art. Iran’s political dynamism and wholesale social changes throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s, her role as an ideological source since 1979 and her national psyche and propaganda art during the Iran - Iraq war have all helped Iran and her artists to acquire a focus, and then a forte, in those media. The new Iran’s maturity and post war peace and prosperity have only highlighted these strengths.
Saeedi’s art draws inspiration from the traditional Eastern focus on the aesthetic and from his own expertise with the Perso-Arabic script. He uses optical opportunities presented by the dancing and sensual nature of the Perso-Arabic script to provide a wholly conceptual approach to contemporary art.
While earlier futurists such as Giacomo Balla, Victor Vasarley and Bridget Riley manipulated the geometry of form and space, Saeedi uses the amenable Perso-Arabic script, and the distinctly Iranian Nastaliq and Siah-Mashq, to induce the notions of movement, speed, velocity, space and colour, and to create optical illusion of all sorts.
1979
Born, Tehran, Iran, September 4
"Malekeh Ashtar" School of Graphics, Tehran
University of Cambridge
EXHIBITIONS
2007
Selective Exhibition of 50 Years of Iranian Art, Zurich; Resistance Poster Exhibition, Tehran Contemporary Art Museum, Tehran; International Triennial of the Political Poster, Brussels; International Invitational Poster, Denver; Taiwan International Poster Design Award
2006
International Poster Biennial, Mexico City; The Eighth International Poster Triennial in Tokyo; Poster Biennale, Warsaw; New Visual Culture of Modern Iran, Amsterdam; "Golden Bee 7", Moscow; Image of the Year, Iranian Artists’ House, Iran; International Biennale of Graphic Design, Prague; Ogaki International Invitational Poster Exhibition, Ogaki, Japan
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2005
China International Poster Biennial, Beijing; Ogaki Poster Museum, Ogaki, Japan; “A Flower from East", Amsterdam
2004
International Triennial of the Political poster, Brussels; International Art and graphic design Festival, Chaumont, France; "40+40" Exhibition, Castello Svevo, Italy; Persian Spring, Paris; International Biennial of the Poster, Mexico City; Iranian Graphic Designers and Typography Exhibition, Moscow; "Un Cri Persan", La Louviere, Belgium; Biennial of the Islamic World Poster, Paris
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2003
International Triennial of Graphic Art, Kiev; International Poster Triennial, Ljubljana; International Poster Triennial, Tokyo; "Un Cri Persan" the second exhibition of the Iranian graphic designers, Chaumont, France; International Metaphorical Posters Exhibition, Denver, Colorado
2002
International Biennial of the Poster, Mexico City; Discover Asia International Poster Exhibition, Taipei; Red Cross International Poster Exhibition, Beijing Selection of works in Museums • Museum of Modern Arts, Toyama, Japan • Ogaki Poster Museum, Japan • Wilanowie Museum of Posters, Warsaw • Centre of art Pompidou, Paris • Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts, Iran • Trenava Museum of Posters, Slovakia • The Netherlands Museum of Posters, Amsterdam • Chaumont Museum of Posters, France • Ogaki Poster Museum, Japan
