Modernity and Nihilism have an inseparable bond. Philosophy of Nietzsche is centered on criticism of formation of modernity, to the effect of criticizing the his tory of wisdom thinking. Nietzsche pursues criticizing Rationalism approach, which is the heritage of Socrates- Chris tianity in the wes tern culture. He introduces rationality with the excuse of being cold, ins tinct-free and militant life, as a disease. Nietzsche by means of s tudying the phenomenology of the outcomes of Rationalism in the culture of his contemporary society, points out that the lifes tyle created by philosophy and later on by Chris tianity which has spread over the pas t 2000 years in the European civilization, have caused a great and his toric disease in the culture and life of the humans, which is called “Nihilism”. Nietzsche by portraying new prospects in ethics like what has been said in the books of Thus Spoke Zarathus tra, Beyond Good and Evil, The Will to Power, preaches new values.
Nietzsche’s approaches towards the disease of Europe and the Nihilism hidden in it, entered art through modernism as one of the paradigms of modernity to the extent that it had deep impacts on the formation and orientation of schools of thought, like Futurism, Dadaism and Expressionism. Despite being present at the heart of the modern art, Nihilism cannot be obviously seen in the initiating aspects of the modernis tic art in Iran. In 1934 in Iran, Tehran University the firs t ins titution for development of modernity was s tablished. With formation of the faculty of fine arts in 1941 at this university, the firs t s teps of teaching modernity in the art were officially taken. Eleven painters, as the firs t generation of Iranian painters graduated from this faculty between 1941 and 1945. And from amongs t them, Jalil Ziapour s tudied more than the res t about the modern art in the wes t. Through awareness and choosing from amongs t wes tern art frameworks, with an eye to the modernis tic schools, he tried to find a new framework of art in order to express the Iranian contents in his works. This paper is aimed at asking why the Nihilis tic aspects of modernism are not reflected in the modern works of art of the firs t generation of Iranian painters, with an emphasis placed over Ziapour’s works. According to this artis tic research ahead of us, with reference to the accredited sources, and explanation of modernity and the progressive artis tic movement of the 20th century like Dadaism and Nietzsche’s Nihilism, it has been tried to inves tigate the way the artis tic modernism entered Iran, and how it affected the modern painting in Iran. This paper tries to indicate that although Ziapour and other modern painters in the firs t generation of painters in Iran have been effected by modernity and its outcomes, they were not interes ted in reflecting the concepts of the wes tern art in their works. He ignored this issue that in the modern art, the form and the content are dependent on each other, and by means of separating these two, he tried to localize the modern art.