Iran Tourist and Travel Guide

Thursday, June 23, 2011

About Morteza Katouzian

Morteza Katouzian was born on July 3, 1943 in a middle-class, art-loving family. He loved painting since childhood and he spent all his time on learning this art without any teacher.In 1960 he started graphics and painting work professionally. In graphics, he

had created several posters, logos, book covers and brochures. In 1974, he accepted the responsibility of holding Tehran International Graphics Exhibition named “African Starvelings” sponsored by I.A.A. international organization, and he performed the task in a reputable way and Swon the prize of “Poster of Integration”. He was one of the founders of Graphic Artists’ syndicate in the years before the revolution and he was its head of the board for 2 years. During the past years, he has attended several collective exhibitions and held 4 solo exhibitions. All of them were “The Most Visited” exhibitions in the history of art in Iran due to the high quality of exhibited works and the affectionate look at humans and issues related to their lives which were presented in these paintings. As an example, according to the official statistics the exhibition of his works at Museum of Contemporary Arts in 1979 had 20,000 visitors. In his last exhibition in June 2008 which was held by 94 works at Saad-Abad Cultural-Historical Complex, on Wednesday June 18, 2008 in a magnificent ceremony, he was awarded UNESCO’s citation in respect of his 50 years of activities in the field of painting and his 30 years of unfeigned teaching to Iranian youth. In these 30 years of teaching painting, dozens of painters have been presented to the society of art from his small studio. I To introduce and encourage his students, he held 3 collective exhibitions for them andattended one

exhibition along with them at Museum of Contemporary Arts. Through his endeavor, a book of the paintings of his students was published in 2005 which was welcomed by public.

At the time, some of these students are well-known Iranian painters and artists and they are also training students in their own studios.

Four books of Morteza Katouzian’s paintings have already been published and a lot of his works have been presented as posters. Five of his paintings are in Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts and a big number of them are in the collections of Iranian and foreign collectors in different countries.

In his youth, he spent his free time on sports. In 1970, he was the first person who could get Karate black belt in Iran. During the following years he trained competent trainees in this field. Now holding Black Belt Dan 7 from Karate federation of Islamic Republic of Iran, he is one of the pioneers of this martial art.

Morteza Katouzian

About Persian language

The Persian language has been written with a number of different scripts, including the Old Persian Cuneiform, Pahlavi, Aramaic, and Avestan, Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. After the Islamic conquest of the Persian Sassanian Empire in 642 AD, Arabic became the language of government, culture and especially religion.
Modern Persian appeared during the 9th century. It is written in a version of the Arabic script and is full of words of Arabic origin. There are also two methods of writing Persian with the Latin alphabet.
Under Mongolian and Turkish rulers, Persian was adopted as the language of government in Turkey, central Asia and India, where it was used for centuries, and until after 1900 in Kashmir.
Persian is a member of the Iranian branch of Indo-European languages spoken by about 130 million people, mainly in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. There are also significiant numbers of speakers in many other countries, including Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Iraq, Turkey, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Israel, Turkmenistan, Oman, Yemen, the UAE and the USA.
In Afghanistan Persian is known as Dari (درى) or Dari-Persian, while in Tajikistan it's known as Tajiki (Тоҷики / تاجيكى).

Persian, Farsi or Parsi?

The official language of Iran is sometimes called Farsi in English and other languages. This is a correct transliteration of the native name of the language, however many, including the ISO and the Academy of Persian Language and Literature, prefer the name Persian for the language. Some speakers use the older local name: Parsi (پارسیThere is some discussion about this topic at Iranian.com and wikipedia .

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Iranian moadist and designer Bijan Pakzad died -Bijan

Born in Tehran, Iran, Bijan immigrated to the United States, to Los Angeles in 1973. His exclusive boutique on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills was established in 1976 and can be visited by "appointment only". It has been described as "the most expensive store in the world".

Bijan's main residence was in Beverly Hills, California, but he was also known to own residences in New York and Malibu, as well as Milan and Florence, Italy. Up until the time of his death, Bijan was one of few Iranians in the media limelight who were still permitted to enter Iran.

Bijan was also known for his automobiles. in his collection were a Yellow Bentley Azure with black interior, as well as a Black Bentley Azure with yellow interior. He was also known to have a Black Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren with a customized paint scheme, a yellow Ferrari 430, a Yellow Rolls Royce Drophead Coupe, and a Bugatti Veyron, all of which he is known to park outside of his Rodeo Drive boutique.

In the late 1980s Bijan designed a golden Colt revolver. The gun had a leather handgrip fashioned for a .38-cal. Colt revolver inlaid in the cylinder was 56 grams of 24-karat gold, the gun was placed in a mink pouch in a Baccarat crystal case embossed with the customer's name. Bijan's own signature is engraved in gold on the barrel of the gun. Only 200 such guns were made. In 2005, one of these guns sold to Jacob Nahamia at Christie's auction house for over $50,000 USD.
In 2000 Bijan courted controversy when an advertisement featuring a "rotund [nude] model named Bella" and himself was at first rejected by New York magazines before it was accepted by Tina Brown's Talkmagazine]

Death

On April 14, 2011 Bijan suffered a heart attack and was immediately rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center California but he passed away two days later on April 16, 2011 at 8:05 AM .He Was 67 Years old.