About the Artist
Jalaleddin Mashmooli
- Practice
- Visual Artist
- Role
- Environmental Art Curator
- Born
- 1977, Iran
- Based
- Iran
Jalaleddin Mashmooli (b. 1977, Iran) is a contemporary visual artist whose practice bridges expressive painting and socially engaged environmental art.
Over two decades his work has explored the connections between humanity, nature and the collective memory of ecosystems.
His paintings are recognised for rich textures and impasto technique. He is the founder and director of the Art in Village initiative (est. 2008), a long-term cultural project decentralising contemporary art and fostering dialogue between international artists and rural communities.
His works have appeared in solo and group exhibitions, international art projects and major regional auctions including the Tehran Auction. He lives and works in Iran.
Acquisitions, exhibition proposals, press and curatorial requests are handled by the artist's management.
Artist Statement
“Impasto is not a style for me but a form of testimony: the paint holds time the way soil holds a village.”
My painting begins with matter. Thick layers of oil and acrylic are pressed, dragged and built until the surface carries the same weight as the landscape it remembers. Impasto is not a style for me but a form of testimony: the paint holds time the way soil holds a village.
Bulls, fish, flowerpots and colchicum flowers return through my work as witnesses. They belong to the rural north of Iran where I grew up, and they carry the quiet economy of a life lived close to the land. Painting them at monumental scale is a way of insisting that this world is not marginal.
Since 2008, the Art in Village initiative has extended this conviction beyond the studio, moving contemporary art out of metropolitan galleries and into rural communities, and inviting international artists to work alongside the people who live there.
Publications & Academic Recognition
Authored Books
Pioneers of Contemporary Art
- Year
- 2005
- Publisher
- Shelfin Publishing
Analysis of 30 modernist master painters.
Book of Faces (Chehreh beh Chehreh)
- Year
- 2006
- Publisher
- Zohreh Publishing
Portraiture study of 30 prominent Iranian literary & cultural icons.
Academic & Sociological Recognition
Social Art in Iran (2019)
- Author
- Dr. M. R. Moridi (University of Arts & Aban)
A curriculum reference text at the University of Arts, Tehran, dedicating three pages to analyzing Jalaleddin Mashmooli's “Art in the Village” project and rural public art practice.
Academic & Institutional Recognition
Art in the Village is studied in Social Art in Iran, the university textbook by Dr. M. R. Moridi.
Published in 2019 and taught as a curriculum reference at the University of Arts, Tehran, the book devotes three pages to the initiative — placing Mashmooli's rural public art practice within the sociology of contemporary Iranian art and establishing it as a documented case study for a generation of students.
Read the essay →Press & Media
Tandis Art Magazine
Critical feature
Recurring critical coverage of the studio practice and of Art in the Village, examining the impasto surfaces of the Colchicum and Bulls series alongside the initiative's decentralising of contemporary art.
Iran Daily
Cultural report
English-language reporting on the Art in the Village programme and its expansion to more than 75 villages, framing it as one of the country's longest-running community art projects.
Ebtekar
Interview & review
Interviews and exhibition reviews covering Mashmooli's painting series, his authored books, and the relationship between rural life and his large-scale canvases.
Series
Colchicum (Hasrat)
Monumental acrylic triptychs, 2024–2026.
Bulls (Ghav-ha)
Oil on cardboard and paper, 2015–2019.
Flowerpot (Goldan)
Acrylic and oil, 2017–2022.
Fish (MaAhi)
Large-format acrylic on canvas, 2012.
Anywhere (Har Koja)
Acrylic on canvas and ink on paper, 2017–2018.
Auction Records
- 202524th Tehran AuctionContemporary Art
- 202420th Tehran AuctionModern & Contemporary Art
- 202317th Tehran AuctionModern & Contemporary Art
- 202216th Tehran AuctionContemporary Art
- 2022VenoArt Valentine's AuctionUSA
- 2021Modern & Contemporary Iranian Art Auction
Collector & Gallery Relations
Acquisitions, exhibition proposals, press and curatorial requests are handled by the artist's management.
- Management — France
- 5 Rue de la Zorn, 67300 Schiltigheim, France
- Studio — Iran
- No. 442, Opposite Kuhsaran 59, Kotena Village, Kargar St., Qaem Shahr, Mazandaran, Iran
- WhatsApp / Telegram & Instagram
- +33 6 05 51 64 77@jalaleddin.mashmooli