Undiscovered Minimalism

Over the course of the past two decades a previously unrecognized genre of startlingly modern looking large flatwoven hangings and covers (gelims) has emerged from an isolated highland region in Mazandaran Province in northern Iran. No one had imagined that hidden in the forests south of the Caspian Sea there could have existed such sophisticated treasures, which in their deceptive simplicity of abstract patterning and subtle coloring are much in accord with the aesthetic canons of contemporary “minimalist” art.