Nicky Nodjoumi

Nicky Nodjoumi’s collage-like paintings place figurative elements in semiabstract compositions that suggest narrative scenes while maintaining a disorienting, dream-like quality. Nodjoumi mixes serious historical influences with satirical humor, producing works that are informed by the artist’s experience as a young Iranian during the Islamic Revolution. Nodjoumi left Tehran after earning an art degree from the Tehran University of Fine Arts and relocated to the US, where he received his Masters from the City College of New York, in 1974. He returned to Iran to teach, and, along with his students, designed political posters in an active role in the early revolutionary activities against Iran’s Shah. Though he was exiled from Iran for these activities and now resides in New York, Nodjoumi’s political engagement continues to be represented in his artwork.

Nodjoumi has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Artists Space in New York, and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. His work has also been included in group shows at New York's Asia Society, the Queens Museum of Art, and the Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, ME.