The Italian Cultural Institute in Strasbourg is hosting an exhibition entitled “Primavera” featuring works by painter Farhad Ostovani. Organised to mark the 700th anniversary of the death of the poet Dante Alighieri, the event opened on 12 April 2022 and runs until 4 May.
The exhibition features 33 watercolours (composed of pastels and pigment on photographic media) alongside 33 sonnets from “Vita Nova”, one of Dante’s early works. In this this elegy in prose and poetry, written in about 1295, the poet describes his encounter with the young Beatrice, his love for her and her premature death. This cultural initiative is accompanied by a presentation of the exhibition catalogue, published by Alsace-based L’Atelier Contemporain.
Farhad Ostovani currently lives and works in Paris. He was born in Lahijan, in northern Iran, in 1950 and began painting when he was 12 years old. He enrolled at the College of Fine Art at the University of Tehran in 1970 and five years later entered the Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris. His first solo exhibition, in 1973, was staged by the French Institute in Tehran. In 2014 Farhad Ostovani was awarded the Grand Prix de bibliophilie (Jean Lurçat Prize) by the College of Fine Art for “We talked between the rooms”, a poem by Emily Dickinson translated by Yves Bonnefoy.
