Behjat Sadr

A pioneer in visual arts in Iran, Behjat Sadr created abstract oil paintings characterised by thick, layered colour strokes, sometimes using palette knife and her hand instead of brushes, depicting recurring shapes and geometric configurations. Influenced by the cities she lived in – Tehran, Rome and Paris – Sadr’s practice traced experimentation with media, simplicity and innovation associated with modernism and juxtapositions and complexities of the 20th century. One of the first women to emerge on the international biennale scene in the early 1960s, Sadr’s practice resonates with a sense of radicality, sensitive to the times of emancipation and insurrection. Inspired by the 1960s movements of Kinetic and Opt art, the artist experimented with mirror and light movement, compositions on wooden shutters and cloths. Her versatility further spreads to her play with small-scale photo-paintings and photomontage. Always searching for novelties in artistic expression, Sadr’s multifaceted practice was an ode to harmony, dynamics, shape and movement. ...

Balice Hertling was founded in 2007 by Daniele Balice and Alexander Hertling. Balice Hertling has hosted the debut solo shows of many artists like Camille Blatrix, Xinyi Cheng and Isabelle Cornaro—all of whom have gone on to earn widespread recognition. From 2012 to 2016, gallery founders Daniele Balice and Alexander Hertling operated a project space in Manhattan. Returning to France in 2017, they relocated the main gallery to Paris’ Marais district and transformed the former Belleville location into a space for curated projects and shows by younger artists. Indeed, many artists represented by the gallery exemplify unique subcommunities of the emergent art world. This breadth of representation also translates to a breadth of medium, as the gallery represents painters as well as artists working in mixed media such as film, performance and sculptural objects. The gallery also represents artists whose careers are more established : British conceptual artist Stephen Willats, Syrian-born painter and sculptor Simone Fattal, and Italian artist Enzo Cucchi. In its programming and practices, Balice Hertling constantly works toward creating a more diverse and equitable art landscape. In this spirit, the gallery is proud to represent the Estate of Behjat Sadr, who was the first woman artist to be recognized as a modern master in Iran. As a result of the pandemic, the gallery co-founded « Palai » in the summer of 2021, a yearly exhibition hosting a small group of galleries from around the world, in historic locations in Lecce, a city in Italy's Puglia region. Palai is neither a curated exhibition nor a fair, it is thought to be a version of a residency, a collegial collaboration, where artists, galleries, and friends of the art world come together. In 2021 Balice Hertling relocated and brought closer both spaces in the Marais with a new main space inaugurated by a Ser Serpas scultpure solo show, and a new showroom and project space on rue de Montmorency. ...