His Story

Parviz Towfighi, PhD has an artistic style informed from an amalgamation of personal life experiences, his background as an architect, and his imagination. He is fascinated by the intersection of form and function, with bold colors, texture, and carefully constructed composition. His striking and unique style has evolved over the years and would best be described as a combination of Salvador Dali’s surrealism and landscapes, with hints of Pablo Picasso’s cubism, while veering into the abstract.

Towfighi was trained in his early years by renowned Iranian painter Abbas Katouzian, and received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in architecture from the University of Tehran. In the early 1960s, he was awarded the First Class Medal of Science and a scholarship for graduate studies, and moved with his wife, Manijeh, to the United States. Driven by his interest in economics and urban planning, he enrolled in courses at Harvard University and was in the inaugural class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies. He received a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from MIT and shortly thereafter joined the United Nations in New York. 

Working at the United Nations Center for Human Settlements (Habitat), he provided advisory services in environmental and development planning internationally. His final role at the UN was Director of Inter-Agency Affairs at the United Nations Center for Human Settlements in Nairobi, Kenya.  

These days, Towfighi resides in Boston, Massachusetts, where he continues to paint from all the inspirations of his incredible life.