Davood Koochaki

Davood Koochaki was born in 1939 in Rasht, a rice-growing area in north-western Iran. He left school at the age of 7 to help his parents harvest the rice. Therefore, he learnt to write and read only years later, by himself.
At 13 he left home to go to Tehran. He worked in a car workshop by day and drank heavily by night. He sympathized with intellectuals during those days, in spite of being illiterate himself.

When he turned 24 he opened his own car workshop, then married and had children the same year.
Only when he turned 40 did he suddenly start drawing his enigmatic characters. At 60 he began to devote himself to drawing even more, gradually refining a technique that is close to cross-hatching, and increasing the size of his works. It was as if he were suddenly freeing himself of the ghosts of his past. Davood Koochaki's devilish, deformed chimeras appeared as if hidden by a veil, with just their gazes, rictus smiles, and, in many cases, genitals giving them the appearance of tangible, embodied, unveiled beings.
Davood Koochaki exhibited his works for the first time in 2008, in Tehran. His exclusive use of graphite and color pencil gave him the nickname “the Pencil Man”.