Bahman Mohassess’s long-hidden ‘Faun Musician’ resurfaces at Frieze Masters in London

A version of Faun Musician, a sculpture by the Iranian modernist Bahman Mohassess that disappeared from public view after the 1979 revolution, is on show at Frieze Masters in London until October 18, The Art Newspaper reports. It is presented by Ab-Anbar, a gallery that moved from Tehran to London in 2020, in Queering Modernism, a section curated by Anke Kempkes on the often forgotten history of queer artists. Empress Farah Pahlavi commissioned the original in 1971 as one of two public sculptures for the plaza of Tehran's newly built City Theatre. Mohassess, who had studied in Italy and drew deeply on Greek mythology, imagined a nude faun playing a flute. After the revolution the statue was taken down and its whereabouts were unknown for 20 years, until a photograph surfaced in the late 2000s showing it in pieces in the basement of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. Mohassess made three versions. The one in London, a 1.2-metre cast from 1973 lent by a private Italian collection, is not for sale and is on view in the city for the first time since 1980. Gallery director Salman Matinfar describes Mohassess as one of the few figurative artists in 1960s Iran concerned with the human condition. Photo: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.