Manoucher Yektai

Manoucher Yektai (b. 1921, Tehran, Iran; d. 2019, New York City) was a Persian-American artist of the New York School whose painterly impasto works capture still lifes, portraits, and color fields with equal expressiveness. His intense, lyrical pieces maneuver between naturalism and abstraction. Yektai worked on his paintings from the floor, a feature that contributed to their visual dynamism and channeled a mid-century sense of artistic freedom. Invigorating bursts of color, sharp slashes, and wedges of impasto register these expressive gestures. Recognized as a founding member of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, Yektai’s practice was shaped by interactions with contemporaries such as de Kooning, Pollock, Kline and Rothko. Yet his celebration of quotidian beauty is elevated by a vivid blending of cultures. His work was equally informed by his studies in Paris—where he was influenced by the textures of Cezanne, Vuillard, and Bonnard—and by his own Persian origins. Yektai studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and at the Atelier of André Lhote in Paris, as well as at the Art Students League of New York with Robert Hale.