Iranian born Mojé Assefjah moved from Tehran to Germany with her family when she was a teenager. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and continued learning and exploring the medium in ensuing years in Spain, Italy, and New York. Assefjah makes her own pigments the traditional way, grinding minerals which she then combines with another ancient technique, egg yolk. This material allows her to render smooth, matt finishes to her bright, luminous palette. Depth and spacing are important elements in Assefjah’s compositions, her works evoke windows into interior or exterior spaces, places that exist beyond the picture plane. The artist looks to many traditions in the history of painting, from Renaissance pictures to Persian and Indian miniature works to Eastern Asian ink drawings. These techniques come together to form gestures with contrasting colors and an interplay between opacity and transparency that, while abstract, are suggestions of still-lifes or figurations rendered in a quasi-surrealist manner. Assefjah currently lives and works in Munich.