War Painting and Pilgrimage in Iran

What is it about?

The Iraqi army entered the border town of Khoramshahr, in Iranian territory, on September 22, 1980, triggering a war that lasted for eight years. The Khorramshahr mosque houses a mural painted by Nasser Palangi (born 1957) after the liberation of the city in 1982. This work is becoming the pictorial support of a pilgrimage. I seek to understand — through its modes of elaboration, its contents and the echo that the painting still receives in Iran today — what this war painting shows. To this end, I build my analysis by relying on another work, the triptych War (1929–1932), painted in Europe, following the First World War, by the German artist Otto Dix.

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