When artist Farideh Golbahar was growing up in Tehran, her family often slept outside in their spacious, verdant garden during the hot summer months.

That lush backyard and the memory of it remain with Golbahar, now 84, who later became known for her meticulous oils of gardens and their myriad details.

“I’ve painted since I was a child, on all the walls and doors and all kinds of things,” said Golbahar. “I didn’t paint flowers, though. That came later.”

The floral obsession began around 1966, when Golbahar was living in Germany, where her husband, Eli Said Golbahar, now 86, was studying economics.

They were visiting Munich when they came upon a lush painting of flowers at a street exhibition.

“I said to Farideh, ‘Let’s buy this painting,'” said Eli Golbahar. “She said, ‘What? I’ll make one just like it.'”

“I knew that’s what she would say,” continued Eli, during a recent conversation with the couple in their Jerusalem apartment. “And we went out to buy supplies, and that was the beginning of it all.”

Golbahar’s latest exhibit, “Beyond Garden,” is now open at Tel Aviv’s Artists House and will run through July 11, showing works from the last years and decades of this fruitful painter.

It’s the latest in a long series of museum exhibits and gallery showings for Golbahar, including her inaugural 1957 display at the Iran-Italy Biennale of Art in Tehran, group exhibits at the Israel Museum, and solo showings at the Ramat Gan Museum of Art and other institutions.

Golbahar has........

© The Times of Israel