Aghdashloo was appointed by the Shahbanu (Empress), Farah Pahlavi, as the “Head of Artistic Affairs of Shahbanu’s Special Bureau”. His responsibilities included purchase of artworks from contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet for the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. He also helped establish the Reza Abbasi Museum in 1977 and was the head of the museum until 1979.
He married his first wife, actress Shohreh Vaziri-Tabar, aka Shohreh Aghdashloo, in 1972. They divorced in 1979. After the revolution of 1979, Aghdashloo lost both his official jobs and was under threat and was barred from leaving for over 10 years, until 1989. Aghdashloo’s interest in the arts developed early, and he moved to Tehran in his youth to pursue formal education. He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran but left before completing his degree. Nevertheless, his deep engagement with classical Persian art, Western painting techniques, and historical themes laid the foundation for a rich and reflective body of work.
