7sang Interview team
Translated by: Nina Jamshid Nejad

Fereydoun Sadighi is the oldest son of Abolhassan Khan Sadighi the prominent Iranian painter and sculptor Master. He did the same as his father and entered the wonderland of art and sculpture. He has been graduated from the Academy of Art in Vienna, Austria. Here, you can read our interview with Fereydoun Sadighi about his father Abolhassan Sadighi.

+ You can read Abolhassan Sadighi’s biography here.
+ You can see pictures of some of Abolhassan Sadighi’s works here.

_How was your relationship with your father? Please tell us a little bit about him.

-We always talked about art. He used to tell me not to pay attention to the secondary points. Just to listen to the sound my hammer would make and not to even notice if somebody would call my name. He told me not to let anyone make me feel revengeful. And if it happened, there would always be a piece of stone I could hit till it goes smooth! He was really a strange man. I would have just told you I loved him as my father, if you had asked me twenty years ago. But now I can’t ignore I mostly honor him as a real artist. Cause the man he was while working, can’t be found anywhere else. In the hot summers when no one else would ever bother himself working, he worked from morning till night. Not easy at all if you have to hit a large stone with a hammer with the weight of 2 kilograms! And at the end of the day, when you would saw a real masterpiece, you’d just wonder how that ugly, hard stone has became to such a marvelous thing.

-What can you tell us about your father as a sculptor?

-As I am a sculptor myself and have enough experience in this field, I can tell you for sure that it is really unfair even if you say my father was the number one sculptor in Iran. My father is the one. The only one. This is the reason why I think it’s unfair to compare him with other sculptors. There is no one like him in the whole country. I used to work with an Austrian artist called professor Ambrosi. He was one of the greatest sculptors in the whole Europe. After seeing my father’s works, professor Ambrosi said in an interview that my father was the Michael Angelo of the orient. He said it was the time for Europeans to stop being proud of their Michael Angelo. There was another one in the orient also!

-Which of your father’s sculptures is the most famous one? And which one your father, himself liked the most?

-There were three poets my father really loved: Khayyam, Ferdowsi and saadi. He even used their poets when talking. The Italians like my father’s sculpture of Kayyam as much as they like Michael Angelo’s David. The very sculpture that is located in the Laleh Park now. When this sculpture was still in his working place in Italy, people would come to see it, take pictures, etc. the Italian papers had written about it also. In Italy, my father is as famous as he is here in Iran. This sculpture was also the one he, himself liked the most.

-Something memorable about your father?

-One day, when I was about fifteen I went to my father’s workplace. Having seen he was not there, I took his hammer and started hitting the stone he was working on. I have never done that before. I didn’t exactly know what I was doing. I just enjoyed hitting the stone. Suddenly, I felt someone was pulling me back by my ear! Having slapped me on face, my father asked me what the hell I was doing there. I tolled him I was trying to make a sculpture. He said to me angrily that I was better not to do so, ever. He said “Look at me! Can’t you see how troubling your sculptor father’s life is? Wanna have more troubles than me? You want a hard life like mine? Ok, go on sculpturing…!”. “ Now, …” He shouted ”Get out of here!” I still remind of that day whenever I work on the stones.