ArtDayMe : Salimeh Motamedi (b. 1962, Isfahan) works at the intersection of spirituality, mysticism, and contemporary social concerns. When presented by MartX and the Bat Art Group at Frankfurt Art Fair 2024, by Galleria Bianchi in Milan 2025 (Rachel Bianchi Archive), and at Galerie ITHAQUE in Paris 2025, her paintings met with enthusiastic responses from critics, theorists, and collectors alike.

Here we examine a large acrylic abstraction from her Untitled series, created in 2023.

The composition is intensely expressionistic. By leaving the upper part of the canvas almost empty, Motamedi directs the viewer’s gaze toward the tense lower field. The structure is asymmetrical and unrestrained: lines and patches of color gather densely in the center and right, while the left side remains comparatively sparse. No clear boundary separates background from foreground, giving the picture a suspended, intertwined quality that conveys life, turmoil, and endurance.

The eye travels through bursts of green and red, finally resting on a central white-gray “window,” which the artist calls a symbol of hope.

Dominant hues—green, red, white, and gray—are accented by veils of yellow and brown. Green carries layered meanings: sprouting, growth, vitality. Red evokes both blood and defiant energy, while white and gray create breathing space and the possibility of renewal. The collision of light and dark strata sets up a rhythm that simultaneously suggests violence and liberation.

Motamedi’s use of acrylic, applied in free strokes and scratched surfaces, produces a strong physical presence: protest emerges not only in content but in execution. Staining, erasing, and repainting evoke the strata of time and experience; each trace of brush or knife reads as a scar upon the canvas, pointing back to lived history.

Faint figures hover at the work’s left and right edges, their contours merging with the ground, as if appearing or dissolving. This ambiguity aligns with the painting’s themes of social constraint, resilience, and hope.

Though lacking classical perspective, the piece gains striking emotional depth through layered color and contrasting planes. Mist-like gray passages open a distance between viewer and subject, drawing the gaze inward.

According to the artist, the series is a response to pain and social restrictions—and, at the same time, an affirmation of a better future. Greens, whites, and reds, set against defiant grays, intensify the painting’s social thrust while also carrying a message of light and recovery.

Overall, the work fuses anger, steadfastness, and hope. Vivid greens and reds radiate energy and protest, whereas the white and unpainted spaces promise calm and clarity ahead. The canvas extends Motamedi’s long exploration of the meeting point between abstract form and social engagement, blending critique with painterly lyricism. Through symbolic color, open structure, and vigorous gesture, it becomes both protest and promise—a record of collective wounds and an emblem of release, showing how a contemporary movement can be rendered in a personal, poetic language.

Salimeh Motamedi on the Untitled Series

“The Untitled series, focusing on the women’s movement, is among my most recent and contemporary bodies of work. The layers of gray over red, white, and green—the shared palette of all these paintings—echo social pain and constraint. With these colors and gestures I protest, while also wishing for improvement. The white ‘window,’ a shaft of light, is always there: a hope for tomorrow.”

The Market for Salimeh Motamedi’s Work

Over the past decade, Motamedi’s prices have climbed noticeably, reflected in strong sales from Frankfurt Art Fair to recent shows in Paris and Milan. Medium-scale works were listed at USD 4,000 at Frankfurt 2024, the same at Galleria Bianchi, Milan 2025, and USD 5,000 at Galerie ITHAQUE, Paris 2025.

Her first solo show, From Afar a Voice Calls Me, took place in 2005 at Banafshé Gallery, followed by a 2007 exhibition at Tehran’s historic Golestan Gallery. Motamedi’s works have since appeared in major international events—from China Expo 2006 and “World Peace,” Tehran 2007, to Farrell Gallery, Paris 2017; Artem Gallery, Los Angeles 2024; as well as prominent Tehran museums and galleries.