Review: Behshad Arjomandi

If there's one European city tied to landscape painting, it's Venice. The unique relationship between light, air, water and stone, and the fact that no sunset (or sunrise) on the edge of the lagoon is ever the same as another, has made this city an obligatory stop for thousands of landscape painters throughout history. The obsession? To carry that magical atmosphere onto the canvas. Behshad Arjomandi knows a great deal about atmospheres and some Venetian landscapes are among his most celebrated paintings.

They say there's nothing more romantic (or more expensive) than a gondola ride along the Grand Canal or the lagoon. In Romantic Venice, Arjomandi tries to bring to the canvas the unique, unrepeatable beauty of a Venetian sunset. Hundreds of people take up their positions on the terraces every day to watch a one of a kind show, always fascinating, always different.

In Venice Impression, Arjomandi sets up his easel at one of the favourite spots of the Italian city's painters (and photographers). From the Royal Gardens, south of St Mark's Square, with the gondolas in the foreground and San Giorgio Maggiore as a backdrop, you get one of the classic views of the city. Here, again, the Spanish painter concentrates on the atmosphere, on the heaviness of that Venetian air that cleanses, but also wears you out.

Finally, in Venice or Venice II, Arjomandi takes up position at another classic of the city to show the viewer the beauty of the Grand Canal opening onto the lagoon. And if we're still feeling nostalgic for Venice, what better than a painting like Memories of Venice.

Of course, Behshad Arjomandi is much more than a painter of Venetian landscapes, and even more than a landscape painter, though this is one of his favourite genres and the one that has brought him most success over his long career. Because Behshad has lost count of how many prizes he has won. There must be a reason for that.

With a degree in Fine Arts from the Barcelona faculty, he combines his studio work with going out to paint in the open air. Among other things, Behshad has become a regular at quick painting competitions, where he tends to be one of the "most feared rivals". Quick painting isn't just a source of extra income, it's also a way of testing himself, an artistic challenge shared with colleagues and a way of forcing himself to work au plein air.

For a landscape painter like Arjomandi, quick painting is just another means to the same end: capturing on canvas the changing light, the atmosphere and the unique feeling that a motif stirs up. Sitting down to observe a street will never be the same as rendering it from an image or a photograph.

Arjomandi surely makes the most of many of these work trips to shape some of his artworks. A Magical Night in Cuenca casts a spell just like his Venetian landscapes, and the same happens with Alhambra: Behshad climbs up to the Mirador de San Nicolás to capture one of the most famous views in all of Spain.

But the Madrid based painter also finds time for his own city. In canvases like Metrópolis or La Puerta de Alcalá, Arjomandi shows us his talent for drawing, while in Calle de Alcalá or Atardecer en Madrid II he goes for his classic style, more impressionist, more atmospheric.

We were saying that Behshad Arjomandi isn't only a landscape painter, and the proof is his series of symbolic paintings like Lovers, Dreaming or Moonlight. Keeping the misty technique of his landscapes, in these paintings an allegorical murmur spreads out, a love that goes beyond time, that spills off the surface of the painting.

Finally, Arjomandi's output is rounded off by some abstract contributions in which the Madrid based painter concentrates solely on colour harmonies. If Abstract Seascape VIII or Abstract Seascape X slows our pulse the way Rothko's colour fields did, in Spring Symponhy we speed up as if on a sparkling spring afternoon.

We invite you to visit Behshad Arjomandi's gallery on Artelista.