Farhad Moshiri

Farhad Moshiri was born in 1963 in Shiraz, Iran. He and his family relocated to the United States around the time of the Iranian Revolution, and he went on to study at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California. He returned to Tehran in 1991 and established his studio practice there, developing the layered, materially rich style, jars and vessels rendered in paint, Persian script spelled out in glitter or crystal, that became his signature.

His first solo exhibition in New York, Rogue, opened in Chelsea in 2004. He began showing with the Dubai gallery The Third Line in 2006, and went on to hold solo exhibitions with Perrotin and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. In 2017 and 2018 the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh presented Go West, his first major solo exhibition at a U.S. institution, widely covered as evidence of his standing as, in the framing used by several outlets, "the Middle East's Andy Warhol."

Farhad Moshiri died on 17 July 2024 in Tehran, Iran, at the age of 61, after suffering cardiac arrest. His death was announced by The Third Line, the Dubai gallery that had represented him since 2006, and was reported by Artforum, ArtAsiaPacific, ArtReview, and STIRworld among others.

Moshiri's critical reception centers on his ability to translate Persian visual and material culture, calligraphy, embroidery, folk vessels, into a language legible to an international contemporary art audience without losing its specific cultural roots. Reviewers repeatedly framed him as "the Middle East's Andy Warhol" for his embrace of glitter, pop color, repetition, and consumer imagery, a comparison that gained particular currency around his 2017 to 2018 solo exhibition at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. His inclusion in major museum collections over two decades reflects a critical consensus that his work sits credibly at the intersection of Persian tradition and global pop and consumer aesthetics.

Moshiri's best documented auction result is Eshgh (Love), a 2007 embroidery-on-canvas work spelling out the Persian word for love in Swarovski crystals against glitter, which sold for more than USD 1,000,000 at Bonhams in Dubai in 2008. Available sources confirm the year and the venue but not the exact sale date or the precise hammer price, so the figure should be read as a floor rather than an exact number. ArtAsiaPacific credits that sale with making Moshiri the first Middle Eastern contemporary artist to see a work sell for more than USD 1 million at auction, a milestone that anchored his reputation in the regional and international market. More broadly, market databases including Artprice and MutualArt record upward of 200 works by Moshiri at public auction since the early 2000s, mostly paintings, with reported prices reaching roughly USD 1,048,000 for paintings and around USD 542,500 for sculpture; these figures describe the broader market rather than a single confirmed record and should be treated as approximate.

There is no published catalogue raisonne for Farhad Moshiri, and no formal certificate-of-authenticity program has been identified in available sources; verification should be sought through The Third Line and Perrotin, the two galleries that represented him and that maintained active artist relationships through his death in 2024. His auction market, while capable of seven-figure results, rests on a comparatively small number of headline sales rather than deep, continuous trading, so any single price point, including the widely cited 2008 Eshgh (Love) sale, should be read with attention to the specific work and moment rather than as a stable benchmark. Collectors should also take care with identity: a British-Iranian businessman and former Everton FC co-owner shares the name Farhad Moshiri (born 1955) and appears extensively in sports and business press; that individual is unrelated to the artist profiled here.