The introduction provides a comprehensive historiographic overview of art historical works that established the dominant canon of Iranian modernist art. This demonstrates how the common narrative in Iranian art historiography has been predominately modeled after Western modes of knowledge production based on linear narratives of stylistic development. Such a formalist canon, however, largely detaches Iranian modernist production from its sociopolitical context of origin, reduces the artworks to mere aesthetic experiments with Western modernity, and situates it in a historical vacuum. This raises the questions: what does it mean to write Iran’s modernist art history? What interests are behind the idea of formalist progress and the depoliticization of modernist art from Iran? This outline determines the book’s main arguments, namely that Iranian modernist art and criticism functioned as a discursive field to critically explore notions of modernity and modernization. Second, the depoliticization of Iranian modernist art follows a political agenda. Methodologically, the introduction establishes the theoretical framework rooted in global art history and postcolonial theory to deconstruct imperial concepts of modernity and thus decolonize Iranian art history.