Yadegar Asisi

Artist and architect Yadegar Asisi rediscovered the panorama as a form of art at the beginning of the 1990s.

Yadegar Asisi was born to Persian parents in 1955 in Vienna and spent his childhood and school years in Leipzig. A passionate drawer, he first of all studied architecture in Dresden, going on to study painting at West Berlin’s University of the Arts from 1978 to 1984.

The foundation of the »Atelier für Architekturgrafik Berlin« (Studio for Architectural Graphics) and the Brandt-Asisi-Böttcher architectural firm saw the beginning of a successful period of self-employment. The work that emerged during this period was awarded many prizes and Asisi was able to gain and retain a great many renowned clients (among these, Kollhoff, Kleihues, Libeskind, GMP, Buren, Mäckler). It was during this time that the first large-scale projects with their anamorphic perspective came about. These included works for the International Building Exhibition in Berlin in 1984, the Triennale in Milan in 1986 or the EXPO in Seville in 1992, as well as projects like »Mauerdurchblick« (Looking Through the Wall) and »Mythos Berlin« (The Berlin Myth), as well as numerous stage designs and participation in various exhibitions.

»In the panorama, the onlooker becomes his own director.« Yadegar Asisi

From 1996 to 2009, Yadegar Asisi held a professorship for Architectural Graphics at the Beuth Technical University in Berlin, which he gave up so that he would be able to dedicate himself entirely to designing large panoramas. Since 2003 and 2006 respectively, Yadegar Asisi has been using former gas tanks in Leipzig and Dresden as exhibition locations for his panoramas – the asisi Panometers.

»For me, drawing is a cognitive tool in the same ways as reading and writing are.« Yadegar Asisi

In a symbiosis between art and the most modern technology, Yadegar Asisi and his team have been successful in completing these large-scale projects with a very keen eye to structural features. Planning know-how and long-standing experience, brought together with the use of digital image processing and computerized graphic and 3D programs, optimize processes and facilitate both the assignment of different tasks within the project and communication with partners. The universal pictorial language of his art and his purposeful use of the newest technologies have encouraged Yadegar Asisi to use his pool of ideas, which includes almost 30 panoramas, for new projects and thus bring his vision to the world.