Gholamhossein Nami’s work is the product of a critical exploration to define art and its boundaries and a restless search to identify painting as the specific medium of Modern Art. His major achievements in nearly half a century can be categorized in three main series.
The First Series refers to his “White Paintings” which includes monochrome works with projected forms depicting orderly or random occurrences against a white, integrated background. Widely regarded as the artist’s most significant period, it comprises most of his artistic carrier and his legacy in the Iranian modern art history. The second series encompasses his clay works embodying cracked textures on a plain background resembling arid desert. It is a repeating exploration using a specific material with a texture familiar to the Iranians that connotes a metaphorical and poetic context. These surfaces, whether plain or abstract at times, allude to the earth or otherwise architectural surfaces. The third series includes the artist’s calligraphic works comprising of floating surfaces created through fine, delicate strokes reminiscent of writing elements. The opulence of calligraphic signs in these works represents the curves in some letters of the Persian alphabet without the intention to signify a certain letter.
Throughout his artistic carrier, Gholamhossein Nami has always remained bound up with modern aesthetic principles and a critic of his own creations so that every period of his works has been created out of the critique of his previous works. He has managed to constantly stay away from romantic obsessions in his art and to create paintings that, more than any other subjects, are about painting.
