Born in Iran in the northern province of Qazvin in 1924, Monir wanted to study art in Paris but this was not possible because of World War II.
Monir was able to get to the United States and study at Cornell University and at the prominent Parsons School for Design where she received a certificate in fashion illustration. After 12 years in New York she returned to Iran where she actively participated in the local art scene.
A versatile artist Monir participated in the Iran Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1958, 1964, and 1966. She also had solo exhibitions in New York and Paris during her distinguished career.
Monir was known for her micro-mosaic and glass sculptures, but she also worked alongside with Andy Warhol as an illustrator at the Bonwit Teller luxury department store in the 1950s. During Warhol’s visit to Tehran in 1976 Monir presented him with her Mirror Ballworks.
She did not return to Iran after the 1979 revolution, as many of her works and her home were confiscated including an extensive collection of folk art that she acquired during her vast travels around Iran.
She returned to Iran in 2004 and in 2017 The Monir Museum opened in Tehran which features over fifty pieces of her work. This was the first museum in Iran that was dedicated to the work of a female artist.
Her social circle included such artists as Joan Mitchell, Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, and Frank Stella. In 1957 she returned to Iran to marry Abolbashur Farmanfarmaian, an international lawyer whom she had met in New York.
Farmanfarmaian began to explore her own country’s heritage, assembling an extensive collection that included textiles, Turkoman jewelry, and qahveh khaneh (“coffeehouse”) paintings featuring traditional storytelling motifs. Her floral monotypes earned a gold medal at the 29th Venice Biennale (1958), and in 1963 she had her first solo exhibition, in Tehran. Her own experiments with mirror mosaics began in the late 1960s after she saw compelling examples of the technique at various sites on her travels. Farmanfarmaian was inspired by ayeneh-kari, a traditional decorative technique of embedding fragments of mirrored glass in plaster. In her work Farmanfarmaian often fused enduring Islamic pattern making and a Modernist exploration of abstract geometric forms.
The Iranian Revolution of 1978–79 abruptly suspended Farmanfarmaian’s rising career in Iran. When she and her husband went into a self-imposed exile in New York. For the following 26 years, she worked diligently, making mirror mosaics and reverse glass paintings for her friends and for her own pleasure. In 2004 she was able to return to Tehran and open a studio. Public commissions followed, including a mirror mosaic for the opening of the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2006), and a permanent six-panel installation for the sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Museum in Brisbane (2009). In 2014 Iranian director Bahman Kiarostami premiered his documentary Monir.
Meanwhile, Farmanfarmaian continued to work, exploring the inherent geometric order of pattern, colour, and reflection. In 2015 she had the first comprehensive retrospective of her work in the United States. The exhibition “Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Infinite Possibility: Mirror Works and Drawings 1974–2014” was held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.