ALI AZIZI

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE VIEWING ROOM | MAY 18 - JUNE 27, 2026

There is still a large population of the non-mainstream artworld that is very poorly represented by art history.  For years these artists struggled under the handicap of being called primitive and naive.  They shared the pejoratives of ‘naive’ and ‘primitive’ with the likes of Henri Rousseau and Camille Bombois and others who did not paint by the protocols of the Academy of any time.  But the artists we are referring to here are not like Rousseau or Bombois.  Many of them were and are from rural rather than urban backgrounds.  Their intentionalities did not come from hospitals or institutions but more often from a working person’s need to struggle and survive in an often-hostile environment.  Theirs were different motivations from the smooth “accepted” naive artists yet with some crossovers in common.  

The art we are referring to could be found in places like Brazil, Iran, Jamaica, Haiti, Africa, Cuba and the American South to name a few.  The work itself generally has a more cultural context. It sends different messages than Bombois’ voluptuous nudes.  It is often grouped with Art Brut but it does not wear the attribution comfortably.    

Ali Azizi is certainly one of these artists.  

Azizi was born in 1947 in Golpayegan, Iran.  Later he owned a small fruit juice shop in the south of Tehran where he lived and worked with his wife until he was diagnosed with cancer and could no longer work. 

Confined to home and in pain and mentally distressed, he began to paint as he had in his childhood. 

He began to create albums of found imagery: photographs, magazines, and cartoons. He refers to them when he paints but as apparent in his vibrant, active works there is little relationship to literal images. 

He is a translator, an interpreter of two-dimensional images into a crowded intense version of the world where all is ambiguous and unpredictable. His sense of color and composition have an almost textile-like patchwork feel to them. Despite their brightness and the animated tactile surfaces there is still a sense of unanswered mystery in the paintings. Like many artists in similar circumstances the process of making the work is more important than the results. The art is his savior; his prolific creation releases him from his physical pain and brings meaning to his life. 

A commonalty of the artists now in Iran, despite their wildly different styles, is their use of art as a way of providing an intimate personal bulwark against outside events.  The artmaking provides a shelter and a constructive means of conquering time.  Azizi uses his work as a personal medicine; it is vibrantly active.  The paintings in this online exhibition are frenetic statements of glorious color and raw strength.  We hope you enjoy them.