Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian is one of Iran's most inspiring artists, whose distinguished career has spanned more than five decades. She was born in Iran and first left her country in the late 1940s to study art at Parsons School of Design in New York, where she later befriended many of her contemporaries, including Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Louise Nevelson and Frank Stella.

Her reputation peaked in the 1970s, with major exhibitions in Tehran, Paris and New York. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979 she took refuge in New York, returning to Tehran only in 2000, where, at the age of eighty-four, she still works today.