One of Iran’s most celebrated modern artists, Bahman Mohassess was a prolific painter, sculptor, and set designer as well as a translator and theater director. Born in the Caspian region, Mohassess began studying painting as a teenager and soon thereafter joined an avant-garde movement of literary and visual artists in Tehran. He remained active there until the fall of Mosaddegh in 1953 when he moved to Rome, which remained his home for the majority of his life until his death in 2010. During the Islamic Revolution, most of the public works by Mohassess were destroyed, while the artist himself subsequently destroyed all of his remaining works in Iran. Mohassess also created collages using images from newspapers and magazines, which he referred to as assemblages. While the first of these were created as early as the 1970s, he returned to this medium increasingly in his later years, often taking up the same themes as his paintings and sculptures; five such assemblages are included in LACMA’s permanent collection.

Like birds, fish are a common theme in Mohassess’s work, whether as part of a still life or a critique of the over-fishing of the Caspian Sea. In this collage, a single fish is shown in situ at a seafood market. Its scaly blue body hangs vertically from a beam in front of crates of various other kinds of fish, presumably on display for sale. The scene’s dim lighting and various textures accentuate the market stall’s grime and hint at the multi-sensory experience of a potential buyer. Unlike the more minimal settings of his paintings of fish, the architectural elements and detailed background here leave no ambiguity as to the surroundings or fate of this particular subject.