Zenderoudi was one of a group of artists who sought to develop a uniquely Iranian brand of modernism in the 1960s, one authentically local and not reliant on Western forms. The group was dubbed Saqqakhaneh—the Persian word for the decorated public water fountains that commemorate Shiite martyrs in Iran, which their works resemble. Though the artist’s visual references are culturally specific, his aims are universal. “Men the world over are identical and can all read my work,” Zenderoudi has said. “What matters is to achieve a harmony between the person who created it and the spectator.”

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