Ali Akbar Sanati

Sanati was only six months old when his father died; the mother could not support the child alone, so Hajali Akbar Sanati, director of the Sanati orphanage, became his guardian.

Little Ali Akbar discovered his talent for painting at eight years old. After the boy graduated from high school, Haji Ali Akbar sent him to Tehran for admission to the Kamal-ol-Molk school. This school was famous throughout Iran for its teachers, representatives of various arts. The most famous teachers of Kamal-ol-Molka are Abol Hossein Khan Sedigi, Hossein Shah Sheikhs and Ali Rohsaz.

In 1940, Sanati received a bachelor of arts degree and then returned to Kerman to pay tribute to his guardian. For five years, Sanati trained 40 children in an orphanage, trying to express his deep gratitude to the place that raised him.

In 1945, Sanati returned to Tehran and, together with his guardian, opened a museum on Tuphane Square, which was subsequently transferred to Shir-Khorshid. In 1946, Sanati opened the first anthropological museum in Iran, which instantly attracted thousands of visitors. In the same year, he opened a museum in Imam Khomeini Square and handed it over to the Red Lion and Sun Society, currently known as the Red Crescent Society.

The museum on Tuphane Square was ransacked by the rebels during the 1953 coup that overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Most of the valuable sculptures of the museum were destroyed.

In 1951, Sanati opened another gallery, in which he posted most of his own works, but some of them were transported to Kerman in 1977.

In 1978, the gallery was robbed. All that the robbers left is a few photos of Sanati’s house.

In 1973, the grandson of Hajali Akbar Sanati built a new building on the territory of the orphanage. He opened a museum named after Ali Akbar Sanati. The main exposition was his work and the works of other graduates of Kamal-ol-Molka . ^[3]

By the age of 80, Sanati painted more than six thousand oil and watercolor paintings, and also created several hundred statues from granite, marble and bronze. He very sensitively felt the life of people of that generation. In his paintings, Sanati basically depicted the life of poor people, quite typical of Iran at that time. ^[four]

Sanati's paintings make it clear to the viewer what kind of relationship the artist had with people. All his life he remembered the hardships of orphaned life and painted it on paints on canvas. The central theme of Sanati's paintings was the topic of help - when one person helps another. Another topic that he also often touched upon was love for mother. One of Sanati’s most famous paintings, written in 1982, depicts a beautiful woman hugging her child lovingly. ^[five]

Most of the statues of Sanati are anthropological, each of them tells its own story. Some statues depicted the life of poor people or prisoners, for example, a composition completed in 1950 with a notebook of a man in prison. The remaining works are dedicated to Iranian and foreign artists and historical figures such as Amir-Kabir, Ferdousi, Dekhhod, Bahar, Gandhi, etc.

Sanati also created works from tiles, mosaics and marble - mostly these were compositions where tiles with different textures were harmoniously stacked together. All tiles were created from natural stones. The main works of Sanati in this genre are: a composition that adorned the resting place of Nematullah Vali in Mahan, created in 1976; The “Shepherd and his flock” of 1942, created from colored stones and the “Blacksmith” of 1946 from mosaics and stone.