Exhibition

Rafighi, forty years of light on Antigone
In 1985, Rahmat Rafighi left Tehran for Montpellier. A graduate in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, he spent years creating sets for the Tehran Opera while teaching in his own studio. He discovered a city where a new neighborhood was being born: Antigone.
As early as 1987, he opened a drawing and painting workshop with the Antigone Residents' Association. He took his students to paint outdoors, illustrated stories for the children of the neighborhood school, and created murals with the schoolchildren. Antigone, he has seen grow, brush in hand.
His "Persian gaze on Montpellier" was exhibited at the Musée du Vieux Montpellier as early as 1988. This was followed by exhibitions from the Town Hall to Heidelberg, and a long series of awards at regional salons.
With "Antigone in light," he returns to the landscape he knows by heart. Cypress trees reaching for the sky, bowls overflowing with flowers, facades the color of warm stone under the southern sun. His acrylic painting, whether with knife or brush, retains the vibrancy of working from life. Rafighi paints among passersby: he loves to say that it is the public that feeds his brush.
Exhibiting these canvases in Antigone is coming full circle. You look at a painting, step outside, and find the same place just a few steps away, with new eyes.
Antigone in light — Rafighi. From November 14 to 28, 2026, Galerie Olesya Lisa, 28 allée de l'Eubée, Montpellier. Free entry, Tuesday to Saturday, 10 AM - 7 PM. Opening on Saturday, November 14 at 6 PM, in the presence of the artist.

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