TEHRAN -- American-based Iranian poet and translator Abbas Saffari will display a collection of woodcuts featuring American life during the Great Depression of the 1930s and some artworks on Yazd’s Wind Towers during an exhibition in Tehran.

He will be holding the exhibition in Tehran during the next Iranian calendar year (starting March 20, 2011), he told the Persian service of ISNA.
Some 25 woodcuts featuring glimpses of the lives of American people during the Great Depression featuring New York and Chicago streets during the 1930s under the title of “The Hat that the Wind Blew Away”.
“It was not my intention to depict the poverty of the people in my woodcuts but they reflect the disruptions in society at that time,” he said.
The remaining woodcuts depict Yazd’s Wind Tower which will go on display under the title of “Greeting Breeze”.
“I was born in Yazd and I feel nostalgia for the city whenever I look at the woodcuts but this was not my reason for depicting the wind towers. I selected this subject for their graphic design,” he added.
He said that the wind towers in Yazd have different appearances which result in a greater diversity of artwork in the collection.
While mainly known in Iran as a poet and translator, he mentioned that he was a graduate in art.
He also explained that a woodcut is a relief printing artistic technique for printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges