Nicky Nodjoumi United States (born Iran), b. 1942

Nicky Nodjoumi (b. 1942, Kermanshah, Iran) is a contemporary artist who has used painting as his primary medium while exploring the relationship between power and violence for over 40 years. That Nodjoumi participated in the political revolution that took place in in Iran and as a result was expelled from the country led him to become a major driver in building a profound, political body of works taking social power structure and violence as its subject. The main keywords in Nodjoumi’s work are “ambiguity” and “drama,” with ambiguity here referring to the possibility of observation and expansion of an object with a multi-layered meaning, rather than a lack of position. Nodjoumi leaves room for interpretation and imagination through the intentional arrangement of different events and scenes, instead of direct or critical references to the socio-political events reported in the news.

Nicky Nodjoumi currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, USA. Earning a Bachelor’s degree in Painting from Tehran University of Fine Arts before relocating to the United States in the late 1960s, Nodjoumi received his Master’s degree in Fine Arts from The City College of New York in 1974. Nicky Nodjoumi's works are in several prominent institutional collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the British Museum in London, Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi, the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, and the National Museum of Cuba. Major exhibitions of the artist’s work include those at the LA County Museum of Art (2018); Metropolitan Museum of Art (2015); and Cleveland Museum of Art (2014).