Thirty earthworks created between the early 1960s and 1980s by the Iranian-Armenian artist Marcos Grigorian (1925-2007) will be on view in the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York City since 1985, and the first solo show of the artist’s work since his death in 2007. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an introduction by Fereshteh Daftari, a New York-based independent curator and former curator at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

In the 1950s, Grigorian created a monumental mural titled The Gate of Auschwitz consisting of 12 canvases at 6×10 feet each. Deeply immersing himself in the work, and the horrific nature of the theme, Grigorian, in the early 1960s, began his series of earthworks, canvases and multimedia pieces using dirt as the primary medium. Years ahead of his time, Grigorian’s experimentation with earth, straw, and paint predate later work by American, European, and Japanese artists. Grigorian is represented in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.