Zabihullah Mohammadi was born in 1941 in one of the villages of Aligudarz (Lorestan-Iran).
Although he did not study for more than two years, his love for learning and reading did not disappear.
In childhood, Zabihullah began to read classic books of Iranian literature. He was able to preserve the book of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh[1]. After that, Zabihullah became the village's Naghal[2] and read these stories to poetry and story for everyone.
He needed a picture to tell the story. Because he did not have Naghali's Curtain[3], he began to paint. He fell in love with painting. At the age of 12, one of his paintings was praised by the people of the village. he continued painting with encouragement from his father.
He went to Khuzestan[4] after marriage and experienced various occupations. But do not stop painting. In recent years, his paintings have come to many Iranian and European exhibitions and galleries, he has been praised by scholars. Roger Cardinal[5] is one of the experts in this field, the Cardinal, who uses the term Outsider, tells about his works: His paintings remind me of American Indian paintings, horses, characters And the spaces, in general, is his masterpiece, unique and thoughtful. Currently, he is one of the most well-known artists of outsider in Iran, Zabiullah has read many of Iran's most important books of classical literature throughout his life and has preserved many of them. He draws his paintings based on these stories. His paintings are full of strange and mysterious stories.
Each of his drawings has the rows of the story. His work is full of eastern and Iranian symbols. Zabihullah Mohammadi was featured in media at the Iranian Artists Forum at his first solo exhibition at the Iranian Artists Forum. It was strange for many to wonder how he was killing these paintings by this age? He is currently based in a nearby town of Tehran. Today, he encourages his children to paint every day and hopes to create new paintings.
[1] The Shahnameh, also transliterated as Shahnama (Persian: شاهنامه pronounced [ʃɒːhnɒːˈme], "The Book of Kings"), is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 "distichs" or couplets (two-line verses),[1] the Shahnameh is the world's longest epic poem written by a single poet. It tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century. Modern Iran, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan and the greater region influenced by the Persian culture (such as Georgia, Armenia, Turkey and Dagestan) celebrate this national epic.
[2] One who reads the story of Shahnameh by singing and storytelling
[3] The curtain on which the paintings of Shahnameh are drawn.
[4] One of the provinces in Iran
[5] Roger Cardinal is the author of the book Outsider Art, published in 1972, and is Emeritus Professor at the University of Kent. Outsider Artwas the first book in English to be published on the subject of Art Brut and also introduced the term 'outsider art.' In 1979 he and Victor Musgrave curated 'Outsiders' at the Hayward Gallery, London. Cardinal has published widely on individual outsider artists and written essays on outsider architecture, prison art, autistic art and memory painting. He is a contributing editor of Raw Vision and co-wrote Raw Erotica (2013) along with John Maizels and Colin Rhodes. Cardinal is also on the International Jury of Insita Triannual Exhibition, held in Slovakia.
