Manoucher Yektai, Iranian, French, American, 1922 to 2019, mixed media, oil and pastel, paintng on paper depicting a still life, 1977. Signed and dated upper right. Manoucher Yektai is an Iranian and French artist, known for Abstract figurative painting. Manoucher Yektais life has brought him through three cultures: Iran, France, the United States. This trajectory can be seen as a search for Modernism, and for a participation in Modernism, indeed, for a home in it. For a painter, the itinerary seems clear in its meaning: from Iran where, under Islamic strictures about imagery, free artistic expression was not available, first, with a brief pause in New York, to the ripe ambience of the School of Paris, then more permanently to the fledgling excitement of the emerging New York School. But Yektais development, seen in a larger frame, has not been entirely simple and linear. His trajectory through three cultures seems nomadic, and his identification with Modern New York seems an acceptance of hybridity in the post-Modernist sense; but at the same time, in a kind of artistic double life, he has been careful to maintain his rootedness directly in Persian culture. One of a kind artwork.