Peinture de guerre et représentations anthropomorphiques dans un lieu de prière musulman en Iran

Abstract

The Khorramshahr’s Mosque in Iran still houses today a mural painting that is viewed as the strongest testimony to the Iran-Iraq War. This work was painted by Naser Palangi in the euphoria of victory, after the liberation of the city on May 24, 1982. In wartime, the Iranian artist has drawn from an old folk tradition of narrative figuration and – an event that merits emphasis – brought contemporary painting into a mosque. This painting has acquired an important place in the minds of many Iranians, as well as within the political and artistic movement of “War painting” which developed in Iran in the 1980s. With the support of another war painting: the triptych War, produced in the different context of World War I (1914–1918) and created in Europe by the German painter Otto Dix, I will show that thirty years after its creation, the mural in Khoramshahr’s Mosque has sparked off a war pilgrimage, at the crossroads of a war memorial or a religious and political commemoration.