From Iran to Italy: the multidiscipline of Bizhan Bassiri and his Magmatic Thought 

Art as a combination of cultures, inspirations and creative expression. Bizhan Bassiri: «To focus, I prefer to be in a place as if it were on the moon»

Born in Tehran in 1954, Bizhan Bassiri arrived in Rome in 1975 and at the 57th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia he represented Iran. Today he lives among Tehran, Rome and Fabro (Terni) where he based his foundation: a four thousand square meters that the artist uses both as a studio and as a collector of all the cycles of works conceived over the years.

Lampoon: Bizhan Bassiri

Bizhan Bassiri was a young man when he moved to Rome to attend the Academy of Fine Arts, directed by artist Toti Scialoja. In those years, students such as Mario Ceroli, Pino Pascali, Jannis Kounellis and Bizhan Bassiri attended the Academy’s classrooms where Scialoja  theorized and taught art as the entanglement of multiple artistic and performing forms.

In 1979 Bizhan Bassiri visited the crater of Mount Vesuvius and he received a strong impression at the sight of the crater. From that moment, in the artist’s mind, the combination of eruption-intuition merged into a single concept that became the generative principle of all his work, a tribute and manifestation of cosmic energy. 

Bizhan Bassiri and the Magmatic Thought Manifesto 

As Bizhan Bassiri writes in the Manifesto: «Being for the first time on the crater, I felt the magmatic condition as if it were blood circulating through my veins and in my brain in its creative state. Since then, I have been the guest of that temple where phantoms take shape and stones resemble enormous animals».

In 1990, balancing different artistic expressions – theater, poetry, music, performance, sculpture, and drawing – Bizhan Bassiri created the Magmatic Thought Manifesto, an ongoing series of statements inspired by the layering and the addition of artistic experiences and researches. The Manifesto is a sequence of poetic writings which is constantly enriched by each subsequent process experienced by the artist as he develops new work: it is an unfinished collection.

Literature in Bizhan Bassiri’s world

Bassiri’s entire artistic output stems from an enlightenment that occurred at the sight of the crater of Vesuvius and the idea that the work of art is a manifestation of cosmic energy. As the art historian Bruno Corà has written, «In Bassiri’s Magmatic Thought, art and the entire formative process of the work, like the volcano and its catastrophic activity, are at the origin of the qualitative metamorphosis of matter».

 In Manifesto, the images invoked in the Manifesto, like the artist’s works, come from a suspended and originless time; they are fragments in which heterogeneous suggestions intersect.

Those images are not only visual but also auditory and become like poetic verses or like musical scores, music and poetry often being the protagonists of her works. 

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Bizhan Bassiri: music, architecture and art

In the Manifesto, Bizhan Bassiri expresses a multifaceted artistic vision, which arranges theater, poetry, music, performance, sculpture and drawing. In 2019, the Certosa di San Martino in Naples hosted the works of the Iranian sculptor and poet, along with the musical accompaniment of several musicians. «Space can speak for itself, be an element of knowledge that erases distances and makes contemporaneity remain in time». An experiment that creates a dialogue between the church’s architecture, Bassiri’s artworks and music. 

In recent years Bizhan Bassiri has consolidated a strong musical connection with Nicola Sani, director of the Accademia Musicale Chigiana: in 2021, the album cover of Nicola Sani’s “Tempestate” takes up a work by Iranian artist Bizhan Bassiri, Specchio Solare, whose installations are present within the permanent collections of some of the major museums in Italy. 

Identity is not static: Bizhan Bassiri philosophy behind the work

Bizhan Bassiri is ambassador to the world of Iranian art: «For me, identity is not static but becoming, it has to come out of itself in order to grow. Culture is not a bird to be caged, it is not right to speak of roots to be guarded, rather of a genetic heritage” with which to evolve culturally. I need to always move forward in a flow of time through a tunnel in which nothing is lost, but instead the knowledge and awareness accumulated in the past, flow into the present and accompany me into the future».

The Persian artist’s research extends into progressive investigations, which do not replace but add up, in continuity. The volcano then becomes a metaphor for an action that settles into constant reconfigurations of the landscape. An idea of art steeped in spirituality is condensed in his work and shows the artist’s desire to elude trends and movements, and the desire to merge traits of the cultures of his native country with those of his adopted country

The material experimentation on Bizhan Bassiri works

Bizhan Bassiri works on cycles of long-range works using stone, brass, steel, and gold to re-imagine subjects such as herms- auspicious columns for wayfarers in Greek and Roman traditions-nuts, lecterns, swords, sun mirrors. Telluric and volcanic forms, natural conglomerates, stainless steel mirrors, meteorites soar with tapering plumes toward the sky. 

The material experimentation, which characterizes Bassiri’s entire artistic journey, in the use of aluminum, bronze, lava elements, stems from the desire to express, through sculptures, photographic processing and the use of different painting techniques, the image that underlies the magmatic thought, of which the artist is the manifesto. The force and the  power of volcanic lava, causes the irrepressible urge to create works bearing a mystical and energetic charge. 

The Bassiri Foundation in Umbria, Italy

In 2020, in a space of more than 4,300 square meters near Fabro, Umbria, artist Bizhan Bassiri created and established the Bassiri Foundation. Set up by artist together with Camilla Cionini Visani, the Foundation undertakes to manage, conserve, and diffuse awareness of his work, as well as acting as a body and reference point in promoting art and culture through multidisciplinary initiatives ranging from the visual arts to music, theater, literature and writing.

«The foundation is a natural consequence of the path I have taken over time because culture is a sublimation. I chose Fabro because life took me between Umbria and Tuscany. I had a studio in San Casciano for 30 years, on a hill. To focus, I prefer to be in a place as if it were on the moon». The main goal of the foundation is to promote the local area through an annual programme of cultural events with a particular focus on contemporary art.

Bizhan Bassiri

Originally from Persia, Bizhan Bassiri arrived in Rome in ’75 where he trained at the Academy of Fine Arts under the guidance of Toti Scialoja.  Bizhan Bassiri artistic research starts from the use of different materials: papier-mâché and aluminum surfaces, iron or bronze, lava elements. His intent is to combine artistic language with the poetic, literary, theatrical and musical, through a research that is grounded in his Manifesto of Magmatic Thought.

Elisa Russo