TEHRAN – The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA) is hosting the fourth and final installment of its “Art & War” event series.

Launched on June 8, the exhibition highlights a curated selection of works from the museum’s treasured collection, focusing on the visual narratives of European artists in the wake of the Second World War, Honaronline reported.

Titled “Nine Artworks by Post-War European Painters,” the exhibition showcases nine significant paintings displayed in the museum’s lobby. It invites audiences to reflect on the lasting legacy of World War II—a conflict so expansive that its impact on political thought, philosophical currents, individual and international rights, and the trajectory of aesthetics remains an undeniable force in the subsequent decades.

In its curatorial statement, the museum emphasizes that the post-war era necessitated a period of radical re-evaluation: “Something for review, something for reconstruction, and something for transition and the ritual of forgetting.”

While many artists of the period engaged directly with the imagery of war, the exhibition explores a more internal dialogue among creators. It delves into a collective impulse toward a “social forgetting”—a deep, pervasive effort to move past the unresolved ugliness of the conflict and usher in a new world of self, society, and art.

The exhibition features a distinguished lineup of influential artists, including Francis Bacon, Pierre Soulages, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Max Beckmann, Giorgio Morandi, Günther Uecker, and Hans Hartung. Through their unique visual language, these masters narrate themes of tragedy, reconstruction, abstraction, and the haunting weight of historical memory.

The “Art & War” program provides a unique opportunity to revisit and analyze how contemporary wars influence the formation of different art movements.

The exhibition has been planned as an artistic reaction to the 40-day American-Zionist assault on Iran (from February 28 to April 8), which martyred about 3,500 people, including the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, several officials and military commanders, as well as numerous civilians, including women and children.

During the 40-day war (also known as the Ramadan War), besides some military targets, the US and Israel launched organized attacks against civilian infrastructure, including residential homes, hospitals, refineries, power plants, schools, universities, art and cultural spaces, bookstores, museums, and ancient sites in several cities, causing total or partial damage and injuring innocent people.

The final exhibition of the “Art & War” series is open to the public daily, with the exception of Mondays, through June 16 at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, located next to Laleh Park on N. Kargar Street.

SS/SAB