A rumour is circulating in the international art scene. The taboo word is: cryptorealism. Critics and managers shake their heads in disbelief. Impossible, they whisper behind closed doors, that after all the artistic revolutions of the century, all of which emanated from the West, a magus should emerge from the deeply veiled Orient onto the stage of world art, a painter in the garb of the Magi, who is preparing to revolutionise the painting style of the epoch once again and – disregarding all the rules of postmodernism – to create a completely new style.
Davood Roostaei, the pioneer of Cryptorealism, provokes. And he knows how to provoke. When his last big vernissage was opened a year ago in glamorous Monte Carlo in the presence of the Monegasque jet set, the artist himself stepped up to the microphone without being asked and thanked his patrons. He thanked his patrons, patrons of the arts and his eulogists, and then praised the greatest of all artists in a manner that was as abrupt as it was eloquent. God, the Creator and Sustainer. “For God’s sake,” a princess in the flesh is said to have exclaimed. “the man is mad.” Crazy: I have heard this verdict more than once…