Untitled (Beglari)

Photograph: Courtesy the Asia Society

Those who followed the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979 in The New York Times may remember the drawings of Ardeshir Mohassess, who commented on the horrors of the period. No fan of either Pahlavi or the mullahs, Mohassess has lived in the U.S. since the ’70s, the lot of many Iranian intellectuals, including artists Shirin Neshat and Nicky Nodjoumi, who cocurated this gem of an exhibition. With nearly 70 drawings dating from 1976 to 2000, this retrospective pays homage to an individual dedicated to speaking truth to power.

It helps to know about the injustices perpetrated under the Shah to understand many of the best works here, though their visual metaphors could apply to any number of political situations. The pictures combine influences from the Islamic miniaturist tradition and modernist Surrealism with titles that brim with irony. In a drawing from 1977 captioned current event in iran: shouting demonstrators pass through a shooting spree, a crowd of men lift their right arms in the air, oblivious to the bullet holes in their bodies. During the Shah’s final days, Mohassess draws him dangling from a noose over a mob of sour-faced men in turbans, underscored by the king is always above the people. As the exhibition traces both the change in political rulers and the artist’s own poor health due to Parkinson’s disease, the images grow increasingly abstract and stark. They remain, however, no less disturbing.