Bahram Alivandi is an Iranian visual artist whose paintings typically depict stories from Persian mythology, literature, and oriental mysticism.
His works are rich in symbolism and oriental motifs, such as the fish, gazelle, and horse, which are traditional motifs of Persian miniatures.
Inspired by the rich Iranian culture, he depicts characters and stories from legends and epic poetry by important figures like Ferdowsi and Farid ad-Din Attar.
Born in Fars Province in the South of Iran in 1928, he gained his artistic training in Tehran, initially at the Kamal-ol-Molk Academy of Art, then under the tuition of French masters at Tehran’s School of Fine Arts.
He completed a further degree in painting at the College of Decorative Arts, Tehran. In 1959, he started teaching painting at the Workshop of National Art and the Kamal-ol-Molk Academy of Art for a period of
20 years.
During this time he practiced a variety of traditional Persian arts such as the miniature, ceramics, and tapestries. He has lived in Vienna since 1983.
Outstanding works include a series of large-scale oil paintings executed in the 1980s which depict such important figures as Mithra, Jesus Christ, the Simorgh, and Ferdowsi himself.
In terms of technique his works are at times traditional and at times highly original.
Alivandi’s early paintings, including those from the 1980s, use the now-traditional medium of oil on canvas, yet his aesthetic style, which recalls the stained glass of medieval churches, is highly personal.
During the 1990s Alivandi continued to work in oils, but abandoned the traditional canvas, choosing instead to apply his paints directly to newspaper; a method pioneered by the cubists in the early 1900s.
Since circa 2000, he has worked on a unique method of painting with extremely small dots of ink which are then covered with a layer of veneer to lock and intensify the colors.
This innovative pointillist technique has resulted in the many striking works that demonstrate the beauty of his composition and the power of his vision.
According to one critic, his masterful blending of hues has earned him the title “the magician of colors”.

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