A History of Graphic Design

 A Geometry of Resilience: The Artistic Odyssey of Guity Novin — 

A Journey Through Color, Loss, and Transcendence

Eva N. Hallberg, Ph. D.

Born Guity Navran in 1944 in Kermanshah, Iran, Guity Novin's life and art have been shaped by the turbulent currents of history, personal tragedy, and an unwavering commitment to beauty and transcendence. As the founder of Transpressionism and a pioneering graphic designer, she has spent more than five decades transforming pain into poetry, silence into expression, and loss into light.

Roots in Upheaval

Guity's story begins against the backdrop of her family's dramatic history. Her grandfather, Abdol-Rahim, was a prosperous ship owner and sea merchant trading across the Caspian Sea between the Iranian port of Anzali and Azerbaijan. But the October Revolution and the Red Army's conquest of Anzali in 1921 shattered this prosperity, confiscating his ships and driving him to despair and suicide. This legacy of displacement and resilience would echo through generations.

Her father, Abdol-Rahman Navran, raised by his grandparents and separated from his mother, found independence through work at Iran Customs. There he met and married Molook Kashefi, a local beauty from Kermanshah. Together they raised four children, with Guity as the eldest, in an educated middle-class household that valued culture and learning.

The Formative Years: Art Amid Political Turmoil

In the spring of 1953, when Guity was nine, her family moved to Tehran during one of Iran's most tumultuous periods. Prime Minister Mossadegh had nationalized the oil industry, triggering a confrontation with Britain that culminated in Operation Ajax—the CIA-backed coup that would reshape Iran's destiny. The young Guity absorbed these disturbing events, including news of the police chief's kidnapping and torture, experiences that would later infuse her work with themes of silence, loss, and the search for meaning amid chaos.

At sixteen, her art teacher at Asadi High School recognized her extraordinary talent and encouraged her to apply to the Girl's College of Fine Arts in Tehran. She was admitted, graduated in 1965, and went on to earn her BA in graphic design from the Faculty of Decorative Arts in 1970—a pivotal moment that launched both her artistic and personal journey. That same period, she married economist Farid Novin and became mother to three sons: Saladin, Alamir, and Alishah.

Breaking Barriers: A Pioneer in Graphic Design

In 1970, Guity Novin became the first female graphic designer at the Ministry of Culture and Arts in Tehran—a position that brought immediate resistance and adversity. While male colleagues enjoyed creative freedom, she faced barriers at every turn. Undeterred, she created innovative posters outside the ministry for the private sector and Iran's burgeoning New Wave cinema movement.

Her breakthrough came when director Hajir Darioush, newly appointed president of the First International Film Festival of Tehran, recognized her talent and invited her to design the festival's catalogs and posters. Her work soon graced the covers of prestigious cultural magazines like Negin, Zaman, Chaapar, and Daricheh, establishing her among Iran's pioneering graphic designers alongside Morteza Momayez, Farshid Mesghali, and Ghobad Shiva.

The Artist Emerges: Poetry in Paint

Between 1971 and 1976, Guity held three remarkable solo exhibitions that revealed her unique vision. Expression of Silence (1971), inspired by Omar Khayyám, was followed by Posthumous (1973), a journey through Ahmad Shamlou's poetical spheres, and Tana Naha Yahu, Songs of Dervishes (1975), drawn from Rumi's mystical verse. These exhibitions established her reputation for transforming poetry into visual form, silence into eloquent expression.

A Life in Motion: Europe and Canada

In 1975, Guity moved to The Hague, studying at Vrije Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten and exhibiting Melodious Spheres. She continued to Manchester in 1976, then settled in Kingston, Ontario in 1980. Her exhibition Lost Serenade at Brock Street Gallery earned acclaim, with critics praising her "sophisticated, highly individual style" and noting how her work revealed "a world of fantasy" that was "private, personal, and infinitely rich."

After periods in Montreal, Ottawa (where she co-founded the Artex Gallery at Byward Market), she moved to Vancouver in 1996, where she continues to work today.

Transpressionism: Art as Transcendence

In 1994, Guity founded Transpressionism, a movement born from her opposition to what she saw as the artificiality of postmodernism. For her, art must be a conduit for the observer's imagination, where Love serves as the fundamental principle giving coherence to a random universe. Drawing on legends like Clytie—the maiden transformed into a sunflower through her love for Apollo—Transpressionism seeks to interpret humanism with aesthetic notions of beauty, harmony, and transcendence.

Her solo exhibitions in Vancouver—with titles drawn from poetry like "The Bliss of Solitude" (2004), "Whispered of peace, and truth, and friendliness unquelled" (2007), and "but love is the sky and I am for you, just so long and long enough" (2009)—have continued to explore these themes, inviting viewers into spaces of contemplation and sublime beauty.

The Unbearable Loss: A Mother's Grief

In November 2018, Guity faced the most devastating chapter of her life when her eldest son, Saladin Ali "Sal" Novin, died at age 45 after a courageous two-year battle with Glioblastoma. Sal was a brilliant entrepreneur, the founder of Healthcare Productivity Automation, a mentor to young professionals, and a passionate member of Nashville's tech community. He left behind a daughter, Jacqueline, his brothers Alishah and Alamir, and parents whose hearts would forever bear the weight of his absence.

For an artist who had built her life's work on transforming silence into expression, on finding transcendence through beauty, this loss was the ultimate test of her artistic philosophy. How does one paint beauty when grief overwhelms? How does one speak of love when the beloved is gone? How does one find transcendence when earthly bonds are so violently severed?

Yet Guity's art has always been about this very struggle—the human need to create meaning from chaos, to find light in darkness, to transform unspeakable loss into something that speaks. In the years since Sal's passing, her work has taken on new dimensions of depth and poignancy, each canvas a testament to a mother's love, an artist's resilience, and the human capacity to endure.

A Legacy of Courage and Beauty

Now in her ninth decade, Guity Novin stands as a testament to the power of art to sustain us through life's harshest trials. From the political upheavals of her youth to the personal barriers she faced as a pioneering female artist, from immigration and cultural displacement to the unbearable loss of a child, she has transformed each challenge into creative fuel.

Her contributions to graphic design helped shape Iran's visual culture in the 1960s and 70s. Her paintings hang in private and public collections worldwide. Her founding of Transpressionism has inspired artists across continents. But perhaps her greatest legacy is simply this: the courage to continue creating, to continue believing in beauty and transcendence, even when—especially when—the world breaks your heart.

In Guity Novin's life and work, we see the truth of what she has always believed: that art is not an escape from reality but a way of bearing it, that Love is indeed the principle that gives coherence to chaos, and that even in our darkest moments, we can find—we must find—a way to transform silence into song.