Davood Roostaei | Cryptorealist Artist Passes Away

The heavens have gained another star with the passing of artist Davood Roostaei, and the light here on earth has become just a bit dimmer.

Born in Iran in 1959, Davood grew up in a world of privilege and discovered his passion for creativity and art. Just as he was becoming an adult and coming into his talents, the 1979 Islamic revolution brought his world crashing down around him.

Instead of celebrating his work, the new regime viewed it as subversive and incendiary and had him arrested and put in prison for two years.

Davood described his incarceration as a "horrific experience", and felt, in many ways, that it taught him to "look inside as an artist and outside as a human being". The Iranian prison had a lasting impact on his perception of life and his path as an artist.

What Davood had seen and experienced during his detention caused him to realize that his artistic path could depict the world in the more realistic way he had been taught.

After his release from prison, the artist sought asylum in Germany, where, ironically, that country's government would go through its own turmoil with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

These experiences influenced Davood to develop a surrealistic abstract style of art he called Cryptorealism.

Cryptorealism is defined as an expression of hidden meaning that unfolds through a layered image that requires the active participation of the observer.

To describe one of Davood Roostaei's Cryptorealism paintings in layman's terms, one might say Jackson Pollock meets the Old World Master.

Davood's art education largely took place in Iran and included time at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Tehran; he also studied at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg and at the Hochschule für Kunst” in Cologne.?

It was from here that Davood Roostaei's work would take off internationally.

The late German art historian and critic Hanns Theodor Flemming once said of David's work, "Cryptorealism conveys at first glance the impression of being an abstract-tachist painting, but at its core has a clear meaning and message. It is an art form of enigmatic expression having realistic motifs taken from a wide range of themes from antiquity to the present and future."

Hanns Theodore Flemming would become a friend and mentor to Davood, meeting with him once a week for nearly twenty years. Flemming was a gifted art historian and met with many important artists of the twentieth century, such as Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and Andy Warhol, as well as many other great artists.

Flemming was one of the first to really understand and appreciate Davood's Cryptorealism, and he wrote about it for the last twenty years of his life.

As his Cryptorealism style began to evolve, Roostaei realized that this new artistic approach needed a new and radical technique. He solved this by abandoning conventional artist's paint brushes and beginning to paint with his fingers and hands. To accomplish his goals, the brush could no longer do what he needed done. By connecting as one with the work and feeling the acrylic paint slide between his fingers and the texture of the canvas, Davood Roostaei could now best convey his message and transfer the love, passion, anger, excitement, and longing he felt in his heart into the artwork.

In 2000, Davood Roostaei moved to Los Angeles, California. His artwork has been recognized and bought by renowned institutions such as the Vancouver Fine Art Gallery, the Pashmin Art Gallery in Shanghai and Hamburg, and Beijing’s Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as by collectors across the world.

Davood's work is also in the hands of private collectors, which include Sir Paul McCarthy, Sir Anthony Hopkins, and Hillary Clinton. He also donated some of the proceeds from his work to a variety of international causes.

In March, 2023, Davood passed away suddenly. One of the last people to see him was his friend, and fellow Iranian-born artist, Samira Rostamabadi. He and Samira had grown very close during the past year, and they were making plans for a future together. Davood had described Samira as his last love.

Davood Roostaei was 63 years old.