Farshid Mesghali
Born in Isfahan in 1943, Farshid Mesghali had his primary and high school education in his hometown.In 1960 he began to study painting at the Fine Arts College of Tehran University. His professors included Heidarian, Javadi and Hamidi.
He began to collaborate as illustrator and page lay-out designer with “Negin” magazine in 1964. He also illustrated books for the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults from 1968 to 1970. The first book he illustrated was “Uncle New Year”, while another book illustrated by Mesghali, “The Little Black Fish”, was awarded First Prize of Book Illustration at Bologna Biennial in Italy in 1969.
In 1970, Mesghali began his collaboration with the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults where he, together with Arapic Baghdasarian, set up the animation filmmaking section. He created two films in the first year - “Mr. Monster” and “Misunderstanding” which was awarded the Special Prize at Tehran Children’s International Film Festival.
Concurrently with his animation filmmaking activities, Mesghali was the supervisor of the Institute’s graphic arts section from 1970 to 1978. During that period he created numerous posters for the films produced at the Institute and for Tehran Children’s International Film Festival.
In 1974, Mesghali won the Hans Christian Andersen Award, considered the most prestigious award for children’s books and sometimes referred to as the Nobel Prize of children’s literature, for the collection of his illustrations for children’s books. He was presented the award in a ceremony held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
In 1979, Mesghali traveled to Paris and for the following four years he engaged in painting and sculpture which were exhibited at Sammy Kings Gallery in Paris.
He traveled to the United States in 1986 and set up a graphics studio under the name of Desktop Studio in California and engaged in graphic work.
In 1994, he moved to San Francisco where he engaged in drawing, multimedia works and created virtual reality spaces for the internet. Mesghali has been working in Tehran since 1997.
