TEHRAN -- Iran lost one of its pioneers of Iranian modern art, Behjat Sadr on Tuesday. Behjat died of heart attack at 85 in an island in south France.

The news was confirmed by curator of Golestan Art Gallery Leili Golestan.
“Sadr enjoyed high spirits and was a great artist. She experienced different styles of paintings but mostly preferred to work on the abstract style,” Golestan told the Persian Service of Fars News Agency.
Her works were last displayed in 2007 in the group exhibit “Manifestations of Contemporary Art in Iran” at Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
Born in 1924 in Arak, Sadr began her studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Tehran. Afterwards, she was awarded a scholarship to the Academia di Belle Arti in Rome and later studied at the Naples Academy of Fine Arts. Sadr’s first major exhibition was at the 28th Venice Biennial in 1956.
Her works were exhibited in major cities across the world in New York, Paris, and Rome.
She was the first female contemporary painter to be considered on the same level as her male colleagues in Iran. Some experts believed that she had a complete understanding of modern art.
Sadr once said that living in a foreign country gave her the courage to develop her new style.