Farideh Lashayi (born in 1944 – died on February 24, 2013) was an Iranian modernist painter, writer and translator whose fame stems from her contemporary abstract paintings. Her most important book is a novel called “Bamu’s Scarf” and her other translations include “Night Whispers” by Natalia Ginsburg and “Flowers of Hiroshima” by Edith Morris.  

Lashayi was born in the city of Rasht. She started working as an artist since her childhood, and made copies at the age of ten with Jafar Petgar. After a few months, she started working with Vartan, who had a painting shop on Manochehri Street in Tehran. After high school education, she moved to Germany and after translation courses in Munich, studied decorative arts in Vienna. After completing this course, she spent two years designing crystals at the Reidel factory in Tyrol, Austria. Some of her designs are made in Rosenthal studio on porcelain vases.

Her art studies and being surrounded by painters, sculptors and stage designers coincided with Chinese cultural revolution and its widespread reflections in the world, including in Munich, and as a result, her style was also influenced by this revolution.

In March 1988, an exhibition of Lashayi’s works was held in Classic Gallery. Her works in this exhibition got more transparent and diverse colors, and with her blueish greens which reflected the sky, sea, and the greenness of forest, the earthy color of the potteris were seen which represented a symbol of the earth and soil and the mother nature on pottery and vases.

Critics believe that Farideh Lashayi’s paintings can be considered as an example of the presence of ancient art in contemporary art. The presence of the same sad sophistry of nature that appeared in the works of Northern European painters since the end of the 17th century.

The presence of the tradition of the medium painting, which has emphasized the physicality of color since the time of Cézanne. The presence of the same tradition that emphasizes on mixed lines and colors and irregular forms, and finally, the Far East painting tradition can be felt in all of Lashayi’s works. However, her perspective toward nature is new and modern.

After a long period of illness due to cancer, she finally died at 17:00 on Sunday, February 24th 2013, at the age of 68, in the ICU department of Jam Hospital and buried in Bandasar, Tehran.