Nasser Assar: From Calligraphic Sign to Provencal Landscape

Part of The Artist Archive, Viridian Eclection's research library of artist biographies and signatures. See also the artist page and the Signature Index.

In November 1958 a young Iranian painter living on a few words of French walked into the Musée Cernuschi in Paris, where an exhibition of Chinese painting was on view. By his own later account, recorded in the artist's catalogue raisonné, it woke him from an "abstract slumber." Nasser Assar spent the next half century working out what that awakening meant. He began as a painter of black calligraphic signs on luminous grounds, praised by the critics of the Paris avant garde. He ended as a painter of trees, rocks and mist in the hills of Provence, the close friend and collaborator of the poet Yves Bonnefoy.

Assar is not a household name, and the record about him online is thin, scattered and in places wrong. This article gathers what the primary sources actually say: the catalogue raisonné maintained in his name, museum records, auction catalogues and the dealers who have handled his work. Where sources disagree, we say so. We also explain how Assar signed and dated his paintings, and why the panel in our own inventory is presented as attributed rather than as a confirmed work.

Tehran: A House of Poetry, 1928 to 1953

Nasser Assar was born in Tehran on 26 September 1928, the date given by the official catalogue raisonné. His father, Seyyed Kazim Assar (1885 to 1975), had studied mathematics at the Sorbonne and held the chair of oriental philosophy at the University of Tehran. His mother, Azra Alem, came from a family of jurists in Isfahan. Nasser was the third of four children.

The household was steeped in classical Persian poetry. The catalogue biography records that the verses of Rumi, Hafez and Saadi were sung in the house by professional singers, and that the family spent summers on the slopes of Mount Damavand. The Paris gallery Galerie AB states that Assar began to explore painting and calligraphy at the age of seven. French Wikipedia adds that in the late 1940s he was drawn toward communist youth movements, a detail we have not been able to confirm in a second source.

From 1950 to 1953 Assar studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Tehran. There he formed a close friendship with a classmate born the same year, the painter and poet Sohrab Sepehri (1928 to 1980), who would become one of the best known Iranian poets of the century. According to the catalogue raisonné, the two shared their first studio in Tehran after graduating.

Paris: Signs and Clouds, 1953 to 1963

In 1953 Assar travelled to Hamburg, and from there went on to Paris, where he decided to stay. He spoke Persian and English but almost no French, and had no work. The catalogue biography describes years of hardship: repeated bronchitis turned into chronic asthma, a condition that followed him for the rest of his life. He did not see his family again for about a decade, returning to Iran only in 1962 to visit his father.

In 1954 he met the critic Gérald Gassiot-Talabot, later a founder of the review Opus International, who remained a lifelong friend and advocate. His first solo exhibition, simply titled "Nasser," opened at the Galerie Prismes in Paris on 5 November 1955 with a preface by the critic Julien Alvard.

Alvard is an important name in this story. He was the promoter of nuagisme, a loose grouping of painters whose transparent, atmospheric non-figurative canvases he championed in the 1950s. Assar was associated with the group in its early years, and his work was included in a 2008 exhibition on the Nuagistes in Chartres. French Wikipedia notes, however, that Assar distanced himself from the movement, and he is better understood as an independent figure than as a member of any school.

The decisive event came with the Cernuschi exhibition, Orient Occident: Rencontres et influences durant cinquante siècles d'art, which ran from November 1958 to February 1959. Chinese ink painting gave Assar a way out of what he came to see as the dead end of pure abstraction. He began to distinguish between abstraction and what he called non-figuration, describing his own marks as non-figurative signs rather than abstract forms.

The paintings of these years are the ones most often seen at auction today: black calligraphic signs, brushed with speed and control, floating on grounds of grey, rose, green or ochre. The catalogue raisonné describes one 1960 oil on paper as "black calligraphic signs" on a "grey, pink, green" ground. The work found an audience quickly. Assar showed in Comparaisons at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1957, in Réalités Nouvelles in 1958, in Antagonismes at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 1960, and in the Paris Biennale of 1961 and 1963. In 1960 he showed at the Galerie de Bellechasse; in December 1961 at the Lincoln Gallery in London with a preface by Herbert Read; and in 1962 and 1964 at the Galerie Smith in Brussels.

Bonnefoy and the Turn to the Motif, 1961 to 1968

At the 1961 Biennale Assar met the American poet John Ashbery. The same period brought the friendship that shaped the rest of his life. The catalogue raisonné dates Yves Bonnefoy's first visit to Assar's studio on the rue Pierre-Nicole to 1961; French Wikipedia gives 1962. Either way, the friendship lasted until Assar's death fifty years later, and Bonnefoy wrote about his work repeatedly.

Assar painted a series of twenty oils on paper to accompany poems from Bonnefoy's collection Hier régnant désert. The dealer Aimé Maeght acquired them, but the planned book was never published. French Wikipedia records a remark by Bonnefoy that branches seen in silhouette "transform the ground into sky," and credits it with helping to redirect Assar's painting.

In 1964, in the words of the art historian Rémi Labrusse quoted by the catalogue raisonné, came "a major turning point" in Assar's painting. The calligraphic signs evolved toward identifiable motifs: branches, flowers, birds. The sign became a twig; the ground became air.

An exhibition at the Upper Grosvenor Galleries in London in April and May 1966 led to an eighteen month stay in England. Assar married Isabelle de Gastines at Chelsea Town Hall and lived on the King's Road. In London he saw Francis Bacon and Herbert Read, and was deeply moved by a Bonnard exhibition at the Royal Academy. In winter 1967 the couple stayed at Évenos, a village in the Var above Toulon. The catalogue raisonné marks this as the start of his systematic work from the motif: trees, rocks, hills. That work continued until his death.

Landscapes and Icons, 1968 to 1989

From 1968 to 1979 Assar painted a long series of portraits of Isabelle. The philosopher Roger Munier called them "icons," and Bonnefoy compared them to Byzantine and Romanesque painting and to Giacometti. At the same time the landscapes deepened. Autumns were spent at Fayence in the Var from 1968 to 1977, and from 1979 to 1989 at Montauroux, also in the Var. A 1971 canvas recorded in the catalogue raisonné shows a winter scene in the Var with black peaks, white fog and agitated black vegetation.

Assar's friendships in these years read like a register of postwar French letters. He met the critic Patrick Waldberg in 1971 and the poet Philippe Jaccottet and his wife, the painter Anne-Marie Jaccottet, around 1976 or 1977. In September 1972, on a visit to Tehran, he met the scholar of Persian mysticism Henry Corbin, an encounter the catalogue raisonné calls of great significance; French Wikipedia dates the meeting to 1975. Through the Corbins he came to know Emil Cioran, the translator Pierre Leyris, the art historian Jean Leymarie and the poet Kathleen Raine.

He kept exhibiting. In Paris he showed again at the Galerie de Bellechasse in 1975, with a preface by Bonnefoy, and in 1979, with one by Munier. In 1977 he held two exhibitions in Tehran, at Gallery Litho and the Zand Gallery. Later shows followed at the Galerie Armand Zerbib (1980), the Galerie Hélène Trintignan in Montpellier (1982), and the Galerie Georges Fall in Paris (1984 and 1986). In 1986 he also exhibited at the Patricia Carega Gallery in Washington, D.C.

On 10 July 1982 Assar became a French citizen, according to the catalogue raisonné. From 1981 to 1993 he regularly attended Bonnefoy's lectures at the Collège de France. In September 1986 he suffered a heart attack.

Vaucluse and the Late Work, 1990 to 2011

In his last two decades Assar's landscapes centred on the Vaucluse. French Wikipedia states that from 1991 he and Isabelle stayed near Mormoiron, in a house belonging to the American scholar Mary Ann Caws. A 1990 canvas in the catalogue raisonné depicts poplars in autumn on the road to Blauvac, a village in the same district. The Galerie Champetier, which published a tribute after his death, notes that in these years he painted the same landscapes again and again.

Typical late canvases in the catalogue raisonné have a white ground, blue peaks, and screens of yellow, green or pink trees. They are paintings of observed places, built up from the same vocabulary of strokes he had developed as a calligrapher of signs.

Printmaking became important in the 1990s. Assar made lithographs for Jaccottet's Eaux prodigues (1994) and Bonnefoy's Le Grand Prénom, and Bonnefoy wrote the text for a book of eight lithographs titled simply Nasser Assar (2002). In 2001 the Galerie Alain Couturier in Nice showed his trees and rocks, with Bonnefoy present at the opening. In February 2004 he underwent major heart surgery at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital. He continued to paint.

Two Paris exhibitions closed his lifetime career: Les arbres de Nasser Assar at the Galerie Lambert-Rouland in 2007, and Hanté par l'invisible ("haunted by the invisible") at the Galerie Christophe Gaillard in 2009, a survey of fifty four works with an essay by Rémi Labrusse. The title came from Assar's own words. The Galerie Champetier quotes him: as an Iranian, he wrote, he was perhaps "haunted by the invisible" even while trying to render the visible.

Assar was also a writer. His essay on Bonnefoy, "Le sensible et le sens," appeared in the Cahiers de l'Herne volume on the poet in 2010. His notebooks and a conversation with Jérôme Thélot were published in the 2016 collective monograph Nasser Assar (Éditions Manucius), alongside texts by Bonnefoy, Jaccottet, Munier and Alain Madeleine-Perdrillat.

Nasser Assar died in Paris on 26 July 2011. He was cremated at Père Lachaise on 1 August in a private ceremony attended by Bonnefoy, with eulogies by Madeleine-Perdrillat and the philosopher Christian Jambet.

Reading the Signature

Assar's signature is consistent and well documented, which makes it a useful first test for any painting offered under his name. The catalogue raisonné records the inscription on each entry, and auction houses have published many more. Our review of those records shows the following pattern.

The standard form

From about 1960 onward, Assar signed his oils N.ASSAR in capital letters, with a full stop after the initial, followed by a two digit year. Examples recorded in the catalogue raisonné include "N.ASSAR 60" (1960, oil on paper), "N.ASSAR 65" (1965, oil on canvas), "N.ASSAR 90" (1990), "N.ASSAR 97" (1997) and "N.ASSAR 05" (2005). The Millon auction house recorded "N.Assar 61" on a 1961 oil on paper. The two digit year continues into the 2000s: the 2005 canvas reads "05," not "2005."

Placement

The signature is usually lower right. This holds for every late canvas we reviewed. Lower left placements also occur, chiefly in the early 1960s: the 1961 Millon sheet, a 1961 canvas sold by Briscadieu in Bordeaux, a 1961 canvas sold by Conan in Lyon, and a 1974 oil on paper sold at Coulommiers in 2025 are all described as signed and dated lower left.

Variants

Early works can differ. Christie's catalogued a 1958 canvas, L'Oiseau Persan, as signed and dated "NASSER ASSER /58" lower right, with the title and the artist's address on the reverse. Whether "ASSER" reflects the painting or a cataloguing slip we cannot say without seeing it, but the use of the full first name in the 1950s fits his first exhibition, which was titled simply "Nasser." At the other end of his life, a canvas of about 2010 in the catalogue raisonné is signed only "ASSAR," lower right, and is dated by an inscription on the stretcher.

The reverse

Several late canvases carry stock numbers on the reverse. A 1997 canvas is marked "MN31" with its canvas size, and the canvas of about 2010 reads "MN12 80P date: 2010." Such marks, together with dealer labels from galleries such as Christophe Gaillard and Antoine Laurentin, are worth photographing whenever they are present.

What to check

1. The form of the name: N.ASSAR with a full stop is the norm from about 1960.
2. The year: two digits, not four, in every dated example we found.
3. The placement: lower right is most common, lower left mainly in the early 1960s.
4. The support: the catalogue raisonné groups his work as oils on canvas, oils on paper (often later mounted on canvas), washes, watercolours, gouaches, drawings, lithographs and books. We found no catalogued oils on wood panel.
5. The subject against the date: after the mid 1960s his oils are built on observed landscape, trees, rocks and peaks, not on free floating signs.
6. The reverse: stock numbers, gallery labels, exhibition labels.

Why our panel is presented as attributed

Our painting is an oil on wood panel inscribed "N ASSAR 2004" lower right. The placement matches Assar's habit. Three features do not match the documented record: the inscription as described has no full stop after the initial, the year is written in four digits rather than two, and the support is a wood panel, a format we did not find among his catalogued oils. The dark, branch like calligraphic form on a warm ground also recalls his idiom of the early 1960s more than the observed Vaucluse landscapes of his last years. None of this proves the panel is not by Assar, since artists vary their habits and the catalogue raisonné is still being compiled. It does mean we cannot honestly present the panel as a confirmed work, and so we describe it as attributed.

The right route to a firm answer is the catalogue raisonné itself. Its website invites owners to submit a work information sheet with recto and verso photographs and close details of the signature and any labels. We would welcome that process for any buyer of our panel.

Style and Subjects

Assar's work falls into three broad phases, all sharing a single vocabulary of the brush.

Signs, about 1955 to 1964. Black or dark calligraphic marks, rapid but controlled, on luminous grounds of grey, rose, green or ochre. Critics placed these near nuagisme and the broader lyrical abstraction of postwar Paris. Assar himself preferred the term non-figuration and spoke of signs rather than abstraction.

Motifs and landscape, from 1964. The signs become branches, flowers and birds, and then whole landscapes: hills in the Var, winter fog, peaks and vegetation. The ground, in Bonnefoy's phrase, becomes sky.

Icons and late landscape. The portraits of Isabelle from 1968 to 1979, then from 1990 the trees, rocks and valleys of the Vaucluse, often on white grounds with blue peaks and screens of coloured foliage.

The sources agree on the importance of Persian poetry and of Chinese painting. Galerie AB adds Bonnard, Giacometti and Romantic landscape, and Bonnefoy's comparisons with Byzantine and Romanesque art are recorded in French Wikipedia. Persian calligraphy is supported by Galerie AB's note that he practised it as a child. A specific debt to Persian miniature painting, sometimes assumed for Iranian artists of his generation, is not documented in any source we reviewed.

Where His Work Is Today

• Centre Pompidou, Paris. The Centre Pompidou's online collection lists a Composition dated 1961 under Assar's name.
• Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. Millon's 2021 catalogue states that his work is in the museum's permanent collection, and The Art Newspaper named him in 2015 among artists represented there.
• Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Galerie AB and the Galerie Agnès Thiebault both list it among his public collections. We have not confirmed a specific object in the museum's online database.
• UNESCO, Paris. Listed by the Galerie Agnès Thiebault; not independently confirmed.
• Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP). The CNAP maintains a page on Assar, but it does not list specific works, and we have not confirmed a holding in the national collection.

The principal current dealer is the Galerie Antoine Laurentin in Paris and Brussels, which mounted exhibitions of his work in 2018, 2019 and early 2026. Elmarsa in Dubai included him in a 2023 group exhibition, according to MutualArt. Galerie AB in Paris also handles and appraises his work.

The Market

Assar's auction market is active but modest, with a wide range between works on paper and major canvases. MutualArt counts about 148 results since 2007; Artnet lists 187. The following results are recorded in sources we could consult directly.

Two observations follow. First, among the European results we found, the strongest was a large early canvas of the signs period, which more than tripled its estimate in Lyon. Second, the reported Tehran record sits far above every other result we found. We list it as reported, but we would treat it as an outlier until it can be checked against Tehran Auction's own published results. MutualArt's twelve month average price, around US$1,350, reflects the many prints and small works on paper that also come to market.

Myths and Corrections

"Assadour Nasser Assar." Several online print listings, on Chairish and 1stdibs, credit etchings to "Assadour Nasser Assar," a Lebanese artist born in 1943. That artist is Assadour Bezdikian, the Lebanese printmaker known as Assadour, who is a different person. His etchings are not by Nasser Assar.

Date of birth. The catalogue raisonné gives 26 September 1928. The Galerie Champetier tribute gives 22 September, and the CNAP page gives 1929 as the year. We follow the catalogue raisonné.

Arrival in Paris. The catalogue raisonné, French Wikipedia and Galerie Laurentin all give 1953. A 2023 Briscadieu catalogue note gives 1954. We follow 1953.

French citizenship. The catalogue raisonné dates his naturalisation to 10 July 1982. French Wikipedia gives November 1991. We follow the catalogue raisonné, which is the more detailed source.

Meeting Bonnefoy and Corbin. The catalogue raisonné places the first meeting with Bonnefoy in 1961 and the meeting with Henry Corbin in September 1972. French Wikipedia gives 1962 and 1975.

"He moved to the south of France in 1967." Not quite. Assar kept his Paris studio, and from 1967 spent winters and autumns in villages in the Var, later the Vaucluse. He died in Paris.

Galleries. Assar is sometimes linked to well known Paris dealers in abstraction such as Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Galerie Jean Fournier or Galerie Nane Stern. None appears in the list of solo exhibitions published by the catalogue raisonné. His documented Paris dealers include the Galerie Prismes, the Galerie de Bellechasse, the Galerie Georges Fall, Lambert-Rouland, Christophe Gaillard and, after his death, Antoine Laurentin.

"A lyrical abstractionist." The label is reasonable for his work of the late 1950s, but incomplete. For most of his career Assar painted observed landscape and portraits, and he himself rejected the word abstraction in favour of non-figuration.

Our Painting

Viridian Eclection offers an oil on wood panel attributed to Nasser Assar, inscribed "N ASSAR 2004" lower right. A dark, gestural form, part branch and part written sign, rises against a warm, earth toned ground. For the reasons set out under Reading the Signature, we present it as attributed. We are happy to share close photographs of the inscription, the reverse and the panel edges with any serious buyer, and we support submission to the catalogue raisonné for review.

Timeline

Sources

• Catalogue raisonné de Nasser Assar: Biography
• Catalogue raisonné: Solo exhibitions
• Catalogue raisonné: Group exhibitions
• Catalogue raisonné: Bibliography
• Catalogue raisonné entry 1960HSP002, 1965HST002, 1971HST003, 1990HST001, 1997HST001, 2005HST001, 2010HST001
• Catalogue raisonné: Artwork information sheet (PDF)
• Nasser Assar, French Wikipedia
• Galerie Champetier: Hommage à Nasser Assar
• Galerie AB: Nasser Assar
• Galerie Agnès Thiebault: Assar Nasser
• Galerie Laurentin: Nasser Assar
• Centre Pompidou: Nasser Assar
• Centre national des arts plastiques: Nasser Assar
• The Art Newspaper, 23 November 2015
• Millon, 16 June 2021, lot 72
• Christie's Dubai online: L'Oiseau Persan
• Briscadieu Bordeaux, 25 February 2023, lot 100
• Conan Hôtel d'Ainay, Lyon, lot 259
• Auction Art Rémy Le Fur, lot 142
• Hôtel des Ventes de Coulommiers, 22 February 2025, lot 64
• Artsy: Nasser Assar auction results
• MutualArt: Nasser Assar
• Artnet: Nasser Assar past auction results
• Chairish listing crediting "Assadour Nasser Assar"
• Wikidata: Assadour Bezdikian

Questions About Nasser Assar?

If you own a painting by Nasser Assar, have documentation that adds to this record, or would like to see our panel in person in Reno, we would be glad to hear from you. Please get in touch.