Akbar Behkalam
Akbar Behkalam ( born 1944 in Tabriz, Iran) is an Iranian - German painter and sculptor.
Life
Behkalam Akbar was born in 1944 in Tabriz, the capital of today's East Azerbaijan province in Iran. From 1961 to 1964 he studied art at the University of the Arts Tabriz in Iran. After his military service in Iranian Kurdistan, he moved to Istanbul, where he studied at the Mimar Sinan University Fine Arts and a master student of Prof. Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu was. 1972 to 1974 he lived in various European cities, including in Paris, Frankfurt, Rome and Berlin. In 1974 he went back to Iran to teach at the School of Art Tabriz. Since 1976 Behkalam lives in Berlin. Since 1989 he also has a studio in Brandenburg. He is married and has two children.
Work
Akbar Behkalams often large-scale works often deal with political issues. Are the early works still influenced heavily by the New Realism in symbiosis with Persian miniature painting, subsequent work to date are rather abstract and expressive. Frequently recurring theme is the formation and choreography of crowds.
The eventful history of his homeland is a recurring theme in his work: then employs the series " Persepolis" (1977-1979) with old - Persian iconography, which is faced with the firing squads of the Shah's regime and was under the influence of the Iranian revolution. In the eighties he created the work cycle " justice in God's name ," which focuses on the human rights violations of the Islamic Republic. From 1984 to 1986, Behkalam has extensively dealt with the German revolution of 1848 and created many large scale images that were presented in 1986 in his first major solo exhibition at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Berlin. In Berlin, he is represented with several murals and monuments in the public space, so he designed the memorial to Cemal Kemal Altun in the Berlin Hardenbergstraße.
Behkalam has shown his work in many solo and group exhibitions, both in Germany and internationally. In 2009, he was named the winner of the Tashkent Biennale of Uzbekistan.