TEHRAN At the end of Iran's presidency of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the First Painting Biennial of the Islamic World will open at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts on November 5. Speaking at a press conference, Iraj Eskandari, the secretary of the 1st Painting Biennial of the Islamic World, said that the exhibition aims at preparing the ground for further cooperation among the artists of the Islamic world and presenting a view of the contemporary painting in Islamic states.
Eskandari further said that some 1,500 paintings by 480 Iranian and foreign artists from 30 Islamic states have been sent to the Secretariat of the exhibition, adding that 156 works by 114 artists, 58 of them Iranian, will be presented in the exhibition.
He noted that at the end of the biennial exhibition, the jury comprising five prominent Iranian and foreign artists will award prizes to the best works. Meanwhile, Habibollah Sadeqi, a contemporary artist and secretary of the forthcoming Seminar on Painting in the Islamic World, said that the seminar will open in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts on November 18. At the forthcoming seminar, artists and intellectuals will exchange views on the cultural relations among Islamic States. Sadeqi said that the five-day seminar will be attended by a large number of artists from Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, Kuwait, Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar.