Even after the Iranian revolution of 1979, the western pop art collected by Farah, the last shah’s wife, remained on show at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. Works such as those by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein inspired a generation of artists, among them Khosrow Hassanzadeh, who has died aged 59 of alcohol poisioning after consuming bootleg arak.
Where those artworks depicted people such as Marilyn Monroe and Mick Jagger, Hassanzadeh instead paid homage to greats held dear by working-class Iranians.
