Afshin Pirhashemi

Afshin Pirhashemi was born in 1974 in Urmia, Iran. According to Ayyam Gallery, his longtime representing gallery, he received a grant from the Italian Ambassador to study at the Rome Art Academy and completed a Bachelor of Arts in Painting at Islamic Azad University, Tehran Center, in 2007. One secondary source describes him instead as having left that university program without completing it, so this detail should be treated with some caution. He went on to live and work in Tehran.

Pirhashemi's paintings are known for a photorealist, frequently monochrome style applied to large-scale figurative compositions, most often centered on women and the social and political pressures that shape their lives in Iran. His early recognition came through Iranian institutions: he received an award at the Tehran 6th International Art Biennial in 2003 and the Beijing Art Biennial Award, most often dated to 2004, though at least one source places related Beijing or China Biennale recognition in 2005 and describes it as a second-prize distinction rather than a general award. His work also appeared in group exhibitions at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in 2003, 2004, and 2006. From 2013 onward he held a series of solo exhibitions with Ayyam Gallery in Dubai and London, including Can You Keep a Secret? in 2018.

Afshin Pirhashemi died in 2024, according to MutualArt's artist record, which lists his life dates as 1974 to 2024, and a public passing announcement posted by Ayyam Gallery on its Facebook page. No source located gives an exact death date or place, and some marketplace and gallery pages had not yet been updated to reflect his death as of this writing. This profile does not speculate beyond what is documented.

Public discussion of Pirhashemi centers less on named critical essays than on gallery and market framing of his subject matter: figurative, often monochrome paintings that use photorealist technique to interrogate the role of women and the exercise of power within contemporary Iranian society. His early institutional recognition, at the 2003 Tehran biennial and the Beijing Art Biennial in the mid-2000s, situated him within a generation of Iranian painters gaining regional and international visibility in the 2000s. No verbatim critical quotation from a named critic in a major outlet could be confirmed for this profile, so none is reproduced here.

Pirhashemi's most frequently cited auction record is USD 554,500, paid for the painting Rapture at Christie's Dubai in 2010, according to Artprice and MutualArt, both of which identify it as his historical high; neither source publishes an exact sale date. A separate, more recent MutualArt listing names a different work, Marriage, as a newer top result, but no price for that sale has been published in available sources, so it cannot be confirmed as a new record. Artprice's database records roughly 71 lifetime auction appearances by the artist, indicating a working but comparatively thin secondary market concentrated in Middle Eastern sales.

There is no catalogue raisonne for Pirhashemi, and no certificate-of-authenticity program has been identified; Ayyam Gallery's exhibition history and sales records remain the primary reference point for provenance. His auction footprint is real but limited, anchored by a long-cited 2010 record sale that a newer database entry suggests may have since been surpassed by an unpriced, unconfirmed result. His death in 2024 was corroborated by his representing gallery and by MutualArt's life-dates listing, but the exact date and place have not been made public, and some databases and gallery pages had not yet updated their biographical text to reflect his passing as of this writing, so collectors should treat any biographical detail beyond the confirmed facts here with caution until further documentation is published.