Gizella Varga Sinai

Gizella Varga Sinai (born 1944) is a Hungarian-born painter who has lived and worked in Iran since 1967. Her work draws on both Hungarian and Iranian cultural traditions and frequently incorporates mythology, historical imagery, Persian literature and reflections on migration and cultural identity.

Varga Sinai was a co-founder, with Farah Ossouli, of the Dena Group, a collective of Iranian women artists established in Tehran in 2001. In 2014 she received the Officer's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit for her artistic career combining Hungarian and Eastern cultures and for her contribution to Hungarian–Iranian cultural relations.

Early life and education Varga Sinai was born in Hungary in 1944. She moved to Vienna to study art education at the Academy of Applied Arts, now the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

While in Vienna she met Iranian filmmaker Khosrow Sinai, who was studying film and music in the city. They married and moved to Iran in 1967, settling in Tehran.

The series was exhibited during the Budapest Spring Festival in 2016. Varga Sinai described the journey from West to East as both a geographical and a spiritual one and referred to her encounter with the poetry of Hafez, Omar Khayyam and Ferdowsi as part of this experience.

Her continuing interest in Persian poetry was also reflected in a Hungarian edition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, translated by Sándor Kocsis and illustrated by Varga Sinai.

In 2024 she exhibited a series titled Hafez Divination at Vista Gallery in Tehran.

Dena Group In 2001, Varga Sinai and Farah Ossouli founded the Dena Group in Tehran. The collective brought together twelve professional Iranian women artists from different generations and artistic backgrounds. Rather than promoting a common style, the group sought to provide a platform through which women artists could present their individual work both in Iran and internationally.

Among the venues at which the group presented its work were the Palace of Nations, the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva; the European Parliament in Brussels; and the Ludwig Museum in Koblenz.

Her work has also appeared in several editions of the Tehran Contemporary Painting Biennial and in exhibitions at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.

Recognition In 2014, Hungarian president János Áder awarded Varga Sinai the Officer's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit, Civil Division. The official citation recognised her artistic oeuvre combining Hungarian and Eastern cultures, her decades of work supporting Hungarian–Iranian cultural and artistic relations, and her activities within the Hungarian community in Tehran.

The same official citation described her as a painter and teacher, a founding member of the Dena painting group and founder and president of the Iranian branch of the Panoráma World Club.

Documentary Varga Sinai was the subject of the short documentary Gizella, directed by her husband Khosrow Sinai in 2000. The film examines her life between Hungary and Iran and her development as a painter. It was screened at the cinematheque of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in 2025 as part of the museum's In Women's Words programme.