FORT WORTH, Texas — For Iranian-born painter Amir Akhavan, the road to his solo show, Full Renaissance, in Rome, Italy, began in Fort Worth, Texas. 

What You Need To Know

  • Artist Amir Akhavan's solo show, Full Renaissance, opens Sept. 18 in Rome at Tibaldi Arte Contemporanea.

  • Akhavan trained under well-known Fort Worth/New York artist Ron Tomlinson.

  • The artist recently returned to Fort Worth to get vaccinated.

  • Full Renaissance is composed of works created over the past decade.

As a teenager visiting his brother who was studying in Paris, France, Akhavan met influential Fort Worth/New York artist Ron Tomlinson, who agreed to mentor him at Tomlinson’s Texas home. Akhavan, who moved to Salt Lake City at a young age during the Iranian Revolution, holds dual citizenship in both the U.S. and Iran.

After studying under Tomlinson, Akhavan inherited his mentor’s flare for creating fearless, often provocative abstract images of oil on canvas, punctuated by loose brushwork with figures emerging out of blocks and swatches of paint.

Before embarking for Italy, Akhavan found himself in Texas once again — this time for a vaccination. The airline wouldn’t allow him on a plane until he was inoculated against COVID and produced a negative PCR test 48 hours before his flight. Vaccines are scarce in Tehran, where Akhavan has been living and working through the pandemic.

Though Tomlinson passed away in 2018, Akhavan has always viewed Fort Worth as a second home. He said he sees it as the setting for his artistic awakening.

“I was 18 when I met Ron and 19 when I came to Texas,” he said. “I was trying to figure out what to do with my life. And as soon as I painted with Ron, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is something I'm going to do forever.’ “

Akhavan and his mentor lived and painted together in New York during the last several years of Tomlinson’s life. In the summer of 2017, the two combined for a show, "Once We Were Strangers," at Gary Lichtenstein Editions in Jersey City.

For Akhavan, Full Renaissance is something akin to a mini retrospective of his work over the last decade. Akhavan offers a narrative of people on the fringes of power, from detained immigrants on the Texas border to the brave face of an editor of a women's magazine in Tehran (Zanan). In the “Keeping the Peace” series of paintings, faceless soldiers coagulate in explosive tangles, emerging from a blue grid.

His 18 pieces are deeply rooted in an astringent solution of social and personal history. Akhavan treats towering political and religious figures with a beauty and complexity of statement, a richness of allusion and a magnitude of humane understanding.

“Whatever is important to me shows up in my paintings,” he said. The collection of works are “very much kind of the story of my struggles of being born in Iran and raised in America.

“It’s a criticism of global politics,” he said. “I'm not specifically trying to say something about the Iranian regime or America. As matter of fact, I'm not trying to say anything. I painted it.”

Full Renaissance will be Akhavan’s first solo show outside of the U.S. or Iran. The exhibition opens at 7 p.m. on Sept. 16 in Rome at Tibaldi Arte Contemporanea.