(New York, NY – April 15, 2025) - The Estate of Robert De Niro, Sr. is delighted to announce that Maryam Safajoo is the 2025 recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation’s Fellowship in Fine Arts, underwritten by Robert De Niro in honor of his father, the painter Robert De Niro Sr., a Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts in 1968.
Maryam Safajoo is the fifth recipient of the fellowship established in 2021 by Robert De Niro in collaboration with the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Repetitious Insecurity, 2022. Oil on linen, 18 × 36 inches. Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Maryam Safajoo is a Persian American painter based in the United States. Her
paintings narrate the stories of the contemporary situation of the systematic persecution of the Iranian Baha’i community after the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Tears of Rose Water, 2022. Oil on linen, 20 x 24 inches. Collection of the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
Much of what Safajoo paints has no existing visual record. Through conversations, interviews, and archival research, she reconstructs these histories with meticulous detail, incorporating the clothing, artifacts, and environments that were present at these events. The artist’s sister, mother, and father have all been imprisoned at various times, so the act of illustrating this persecution is both deeply personal and a political act.
Safajoo has exhibited her work at venues including The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA, Museum of Vancouver in Canada, The Massachusetts State House, International Peace Museum in Dayton, OH, Albany Museum of Art in Georgia, NIU Art Museum in Illinois, Crary Art Gallery, a Nonprofit Art Museum, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago, The Museo dos Correios de Brasilia in Brazil, Palace Museum of Mexico City in Mexico, Evanston Art Center in Illinois as well as Monongalia Arts Center in Morgantown, West Virginia among others.