A MONUMENTAL IRANIAN COFFEE HOUSE PAINTING OF THE BATTLE OF KARBALA
Tehran, Iran, ca. 1950 - 1970, signed Mohammad Farahani

Opaque and acrylic pigments on canvas, the monumental horizontal composition an homage and painful reminder of one of the most relevant and iconic scenes in the Shi'a community, the Battle of Karbala, which took place on 10 Muharram 61 AH (10 October 680 AD) and ended with the bloodbath and slaughter of a small group of supporters and relatives of Muhammad's grandson, Hussain ibn Ali, the third Imam of Shi'a Islam, by the hand of the Umayyad caliph Yazid I's military forces, signed Mohammad Farahani (1937 – 2012), also known as Mohammad Darvish, the panel 162.5cm x 262cm (87cm gray panel flap and 44.5cm red panel flap).

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This painting exemplifies a very specific production of 20th-century Iranian pictorial art often called 'coffee house painting', an Iranian narrative painting style mostly featuring epic, religious, and festive themes rooted in the repertoire of Iranian folklore and artistic traditions. This special genre of Persian folk art draws its inspiration from Persian miniature painting translating it into a monumental size.

In Iranian and Middle Eastern cultures, coffee shops, mosques, market places and gymkhanas, were a place to rest, mingle and entertain. At the end of the 19th century, the decline of royal workshops and courtly patronage led craftsmen and painters to seek alternative sources of income and inspiration. As they were sitting in coffee houses listening to the stories narrated by itinerant story-tellers, their genius was triggered and they started painting large-sized canvases that could provide a visual reference of those stories to the audience. Their main 'workshop' became the coffee house, thus the name of the genre. The seed for narrative folk painting was planted and this art kept on flourishing throughout the 20th century.

Coffee House artists would often not have academic knowledge of painting and would paint the characters of Iranian epics, like the Shahnameh, or religious Shi'a events, like the Battle of Karbala, from their imagination. Among the Iranian masters and pioneers of this particular style, like Mohammad Boloukifar, Mohammad Modabber, and Hossein Hamedani, the painter of our lot, Mohammad Farahani (1937 – 2012), emerged as one of the most prominent second-generation Iranian Coffeehouse painters. Trained and mentored by Hossein Qollar-Aqasi, one of the founding fathers of this genre, Farahani developed his own peculiar style, never shying away from monumental-size paintings and emphasising psychological elements in the facial features of his subjects. His works are now part of renowned private and institutional collections both in Iran (Riza Abbasi Museum) and abroad.