Hadi Tabatabai was born in Mashhad, Iran, in 1964. He immigrated to the United States in 1977 with his family, settling in California. Tabatabai received a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Technology from California State University, Fresno, in 1985 and a Bachelor in Fine Arts in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1995. He spent his final semester as an exchange student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Czech Republic.

Tabatabai’s work has been shown in London, Paris, Turin, Bonn, Frankfurt and widely in the United States. He has had solo exhibitions at the Anthony Grant Gallery and Danese/Corey in New York; Brian Gross Fine Art and Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco; Bartha contemporary in London; Peter Blake Gallery in Laguna Beach; Miller ICA at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg; Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe; and Inde/Jacobs in Marfa, Texas.

His works are included in the collections of SFMOMA (San Francisco, California), the Achenbach Foundation at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (San Francisco, California), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (San Francisco, California), BAMPFA (Berkeley, California), New Mexico Museum of Art (Santa Fe, New Mexico), the Delaware Art Museum (Wilmington, Delaware), The Contemporary Museum (Honolulu, Hawaii), the Colby College Museum of Art (Waterville, Maine), NMSU Art Museum (Las Cruces, New Mexico), Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at University of Texas (El Paso, Texas), the Progressive Corporation Art Collection (U.S.A.), the Werner H. Kramarsky Collection (New York, New York), Lloyd Cotsen (Los Angeles, California), Luc Tymans (Antwerp, Belgium), and Agnes Martin (Taos, New Mexico).

2019
SECA Award Nominee, SFMOMA
San Francisco, California

2017
Anchor Artist, wats:ON? Festival
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

2011
SECA Award Nominee, SFMOMA
San Francisco, California

2010
Artist in Residence, Headlands Center for the Arts
Sausalito, California

2008
Grant Recipient, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation
East Hampton, New York

2007
Artist in Residence, Kala Art Institute
Berkeley, California

2006-2007
Affiliate Artist, Headlands Center for the Arts
Sausalito, California

2005
ASIA Alive Artist in Residence, Asian Art Museum
San Francisco, California

2004
SECA Award Finalist, SFMOMA
San Francisco, California

2001
In/site Award Nominee, SFMOMA
San Francisco, California