Four-handed paintings
 
 Before being the protagonists of the green wave, the unprecedented protest movement against the electoral fraud of 2009 which shook Iranian society, destabilizing the Islamic regime, and to which the Arab Spring followed suit, Zahra Rahnavard and Mir Hossein Moussavi were both writers, painters and sculptors. Two artists engaged in the revolution of 1979 as revolutionaries, then politicians, before becoming emblems of hope for a whole generation dreaming of freedom and change. The couple, considered to be dissidents by the regime, were eventually placed under house arrest, and for the past twelve years, the Iranian people have only heard from them through a few photos taken out of the blue in the courtyard of their house. located in the street of the star (Kuche ye Akhtar), now a dead end. However, before the events of 2009, Mir Hossein Moussavi and Zahra Rahnavard were far from being enemies of the revolution. Moussavi being even the young prime minister of the time of Imam Khomeini, he was reputed to be one of the favorites of the supreme leader, founder of the Islamic republic. Yet already at this time when he was closely associated with the top of power, during the Iran-Iraq war, he was also known for reasons other than politics.
 
 Among the names of modernist artists of the 1960s in Iran, the name of Mir Hossein Moussavi appears prominently. A graduate in architecture from the Iranian National University, he is also a painter and journalist and has to his credit more than a hundred paintings exhibited throughout the country.
 
 In reaction to the traditionalist school of "Saghâ khaneh", the Iranian modernists, including the young sculptor Zahra Rahnavard, have made a breakthrough in the Iranian artistic world.
 
 After the 1979 revolution and during the Iran-Iraq war, neither artist fell into the trap of figurative works glorifying the sacred war or the Iranian war martyrs. Their artistic work is a subtle spiritual blend taking inspiration from the Orient while referring to Western artists.
 
 Mir Hossein Moussavi, after the revolution, will be in turn editor-in-chief of the newspaper "the Islamic Republic", then Minister of Foreign Affairs and the last Prime Minister in Iran, before the definitive abolition of this post in the Islamic Republic (1981 to 1989).
 
 Zahra Rahnavard, feminist, scholar, artist and Iranian politician, met Mir Hossein Moussavi in 1969, during a vernissage of the paintings she exhibited. After the 1979 revolution, his sculptures will be exhibited in prestigious places, notably “the lovers' daffodil” installed on the “mother's square” in Tehran. She is also the first woman appointed university chancellor in Iran after the Islamic revolution.
 
 In 2009, after ten years of presidency at the Iranian Academy of Arts, Mir Hossein Moussavi decided to run for president, supported by his wife and the majority of Iranian reformers. His wish is to block Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a conservative, elected in 2005, very controversial in Iran and abroad because of his radical positions, and firmly supported by the second leader of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, who has held the reins of power firmly in his hands since Khomeini's death.
 
 On June 13, 2009, hundreds of thousands of Iranians, stunned by the result of the presidential election, took to the streets to denounce the announced victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
 
 Mir Hossein Moussavi, the big favorite in the presidential elections, and supporter of reforming institutions, immediately denounces massive fraud and opposes the election results.
 After several months of protests and demonstrations in the streets of Tehran, the movement will be repressed in blood and the leaders of the green wave, Mir Hossein Moussavi, Zahra Rahnavard and Mehdi Karoubi and other conservatives, activists and students arrested and imprisoned or placed under house arrest.
 
 When in 2011, the Iranian authorities, without charge or trial, placed the couple under house arrest, a return to their roots went without saying for the two artists.
 
 In the absence of any link with the outside world, even close family at first, and having only very limited access to television from the gangrenous state, meanwhile, up to the neck by regime propaganda, during the first years of house arrest, it was extremely difficult for the couple to get truthful news of what was happening in the country or in the world. Placed under very strict surveillance, with cameras and microphones installed or hidden in every corner of their house, the two spouses cannot even communicate together or have a private life that is not watched by their jailers.
 
 These diaries, these chronicles, these drawings, these messages crossed out immediately after having been written and read, were so many works composed by four hands allowing them to communicate together while establishing a link between their mind, their imagination and the world. outside.
 
 Many references are made to the world of great Iranian artists (Syah Ghalam,  Sultan Mohammad or Reza Abbassi, three great masters of Persian miniature, respectively from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries) and to the great foreign painters, as well as to characters from Persian mythology, such as Rostam (the great hero of the epic of Ferdowsi, the book of Kings), Arash the archer (heroic figure of ancient Persian mythology), the simorgh (mythical fabulous bird living on the legendary mount Qaf), the tales of Calila and Dimna (collection of animal fables dating back to Indian antiquity and very famous in the Middle Ages, inspiring part of La Fontaine's fables), Shirine and Farhad (Legendary love story of classical Persian poetry)…
 
 Twelve years have passed and for the first time the unpublished drawings and writings of Zahra Rahnavard and Mir Hossein Moussavi, all dating from the first two years of deprivation of their liberty, are published in chronicle form, outside the Iran, while both are still detained in their home, located in Star Street in Tehran, by the Iranian authorities without any trial or trial.
 
 The book you have in your hands is a visual testimony of the contemporary history of Iran through the artistic technique of the most emblematic political couple of the beginning of the 21st century Iranian, who since 2009 has become the emblem of the resistance of all a people facing oppression.