“The phrase in question, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ was answered for me in first grade when I was a child of six. I remember one day my father sat me down with a piece of paper and a pen. Then he started to draw.
For a few minutes this action taking place was nothing less than mesmorizing. When he was finished I was looking at a portrait of a man, created right in front of me. It was magical.
At the end of this process the path to my future also was drawn. I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.”
Born in Tehran, Iran in 1952, Davoud’s earliest introduction to art was from his father, whose own love of painting and drawing inspired him. While his father worked as an engineer carving roads into the mountains of northern Iran, Davoud would draw the magnificent landscape under the guidance of the Persian Master of Painting, Nadgm Abadi.
Following his graduation from high school, Davoud was the first in his family to immigrate to the United States, arriving at the LSU campus for English language studies in January of 1972. The following summer, he moved to Chicago to study at the Art Institute. Davoud supported his studies with a string of various jobs, and when the Shah fell in 1979, he took his mother and 12-year-old sister under his wing - all while studying with Egyptian masters sculpture, Mustapha Naguib.
Davoud earned his BFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 1980.
Perhaps it is the combination of this early imagery drawn from his father, combined with his love of sculpture – from Phidias to Brancusi, the drawings of Da Vinci , the paintings of Rembrandt and Van Gogh that result in his haunting, explosive, and modern style.
Throughout these various projects, Davoud continued to explore his unique and magnificent vision through sculpture, painting, drawing, and furniture making. Although Davoud’s subject matter is as vast as his choices of medium and materials, there is a consistency in the sensual, haunting, and seductive style, so powerfully expressed, whether through chiseled marble, cast bronze, or paintings drenched in his signature deep, rich tones and warm hues.