(1935 - 1965)
Born in 1935 in Tabriz, Iran, Mansur attended the Tehran School of Decorative Arts. After a three-year gap from attending school, he continued his art education at the Faculty of Decorative Arts. Mansur played a critical role in the establishment of Iran Gallery which was founded in 1964 in collaboration with other leading artists of his time. While still in high school, Qandriz was drawn to the progressive realist paintings of Ilya Repin (1844-1930) and Russian-Armenian seascape artist Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900). Later in college, and before turning to a paradigmatic exhortation of modernist language within local Iranian narrative, and developing his own semi-abstract style, he was introduced to European modernism, and he delved into the tradition of Russian realists and European classical and figurative art. Matisse, Picasso, and Persian miniature paintings inspired Qandriz’s early figurative work. Qandriz’s works were shown at several exhibitions, including the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Tehran Biennials, the Collection of Modern Iranian Art, which toured the United States and Israel, the São Paulo Art Biennial, and the Iranian Contemporary Art Exhibition in Paris.