Koochaki, Davood

Davood Koochaki was born in 1939 in Jombeza, near Rasht, in a rice-growing region in Northern Iran. Koochaki had to begin work on the fields at the age of seven. At thirteen he left his family for Teheran, to make a better life for himself. He became a car body repairer. He began to draw as a hobby at the age of forty, but only after his retirement at sixty he pursued drawing more seriously. Encouraged by his son-in-law, a professional artist he produced larger drawings with better materials, creating bolder figures and more striking forms in a hatching technique. He is nicknamed ‘the Pencil Man’. His pencil-on-paper drawings of oddly shaped half-human and half-animal creatures are mysterious. These humanoid monsters may reflect his dark and difficult past as he once suggested. After his first exhibition outside Iran (2012, Galerie Hamer) it did not take long to gain world fame. He died in 2021. 

Davood Koochaki
1939 Jomebeza, Iran - 2020 Tehran, Iran