Manoucher Yektai

The first thorough overview of a long-neglected Abstract Expressionist

With decadent colors, loose brushstrokes and heavy-handed impasto, the paintings of the Iranian American artist Manoucher Yektai (1921-2019) fuse Eastern and Western traditions, synthesizing a unique blend of abstraction and figuration that owes as much to Franz Kline as it does to Cezanne and the poetry of Rumi. Influenced by his early life in Iran and his visits to Paris, and by the New York School, Yektai is recognized as one of the few Abstract Expressionists who also continued working in the still-life genre. An accomplished poet, he approached the act of painting with the melodic sensibility of his own free-verse poems. This fully illustrated monograph, featuring essays by Robert Slifkin, Fereshteh Daftari, Media Farzin and Biddle Duke, as well as a conversation between Hadi Fallahpisheh and Tahereh Fallahzadeh, charts the artist’s output over the course of the late 1950s to the early 2000s, spotlighting his novel consideration of form, color and space.