Hanie Soltani (Iranian, b. 1992) is a figurative painter based in Tehran.,She paints women, interiors and everyday objects in bold, saturated colors drawn from Iranian art, set within compositions and figuration rooted in Western painting.,Her paintings explore identity, memory and the emotional lives of her subjects.
Soltani originally trained in the sciences for her bachelor's degree before deciding, despite some opposition, to start over and study painting instead.,She went on to earn an MFA in Painting from the University of Tehran.She typically works on several paintings at once, moving between larger canvases that take months to finish and smaller pieces she completes alongside them.Oil paint remains the medium she returns to even when she cannot work from her studio, though she also works in gouache, pencil and mixed media. She counts Manet, Degas, Uglow, Gauguin, López García and Colville among her influences, alongside contemporaries Zoey Frank, Vincent Desiderio and Ruprecht Von Kaufman.
Her drawing Eyes Wide Open, 2023, pencil on paper, began as a study for a larger painting and grew out of her focus on painting women, capturing what she called “where you are both present and in shock”. The drawing won the Drawing Runner Up Award in Jackson's Art Prize, news she received amid an internet shutdown and war in her home country.She has also received the audience prize at the VIMA Art Prize in Cyprus, and in 2024 her work was included in the National Portrait Gallery's Portrait Award Exhibition.,
