Mally Khorasantchi

Florida Contemporary 2025-26

Mally Khorasantchi (b. Germany, 1948). Faked News XII, 2017. Mixed media on canvas, 72 x 60 in. Courtesy the artist.

Florida Contemporary, an annual exhibition organized by Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum, features artists with diverse artistic interests and backgrounds who hail from a variety of locations throughout Florida. The artists selected for the 13th edition of the exhibition are Mally Khorasantchi, Naples; Boy Kong, Orlando; Jillian Mayer, Miami; and Reginald O’Neal, Miami.

On exhibition

October 18 – June 28, 2026
Located in the Kohan Gallery, Hayes Hall

Artist Mally Khorasantchi was born in Germany and has lived and worked in Southwest Florida since 1992. Her large-scale collage-based paintings are frequently inspired by the region’s flora and fauna, from mangrove roots to honeycombs to palm fronds. These organic forms appear through colorful, loosely painted brushstrokes that convey a sense of wonder at the majesty of nature. The painted strokes are interwoven with collaged elements drawn from a variety of sources, including the artist’s own photographs, family albums, telegrams from her late husband and anonymous magazine images. By combining these elements so densely, Khorasantchi is intentionally overloading her work with information in order to mimic the processes of memory and recollection.

Thematically, Khorasantchi’s works explore the contrasts found in humankind and in nature: beauty and discord, reality and falsehood, or representation and abstraction. Works such as Coming Home 4 (2024) and Immigration (2025) reflect the complexities of the artist’s own life experience. She is both a proud United States citizen and a German immigrant whose childhood was spent in Düsseldorf in the aftermath of World War II. Her art is also shaped by wide-ranging cultural influences, such as the music of George Gershwin, which inspired the monumental quadriptych (four-part painting) Rhapsodie in Blue (2024).

Khorasantchi has maintained an active studio practice for more than 20 years. Her work is represented in the permanent collection of The Baker Museum, as well as museum collections in Florida, New York and Europe. Her work has been exhibited frequently in both museums and galleries, including 24 solo exhibitions and 18 group exhibitions.

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About the Artist

Born soon after the end of World War II in Dusseldorf, Germany, Mally (Breuer) Khorasantchi (b. 1948) discovered her passion for artmaking as a young child. Khorasantchi studied with several noted professional German artists who nurtured her artistic development, and by the 1990s, she had two solo exhibitions of her work in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Mally Khorasantchi immigrated to the United States in 1992, established permanent residency in 2001 and became an American citizen in 2006. She has maintained a full-time studio practice as a painter in Southwest Florida for the past 20 years. Her work has been featured in 24 solo exhibitions throughout Florida, New York City and Germany, as well as 20 group exhibitions, including the Russian State Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. In addition to corporate and private collectors both in the United States and abroad, her paintings are in the permanent museum collections of The Baker Museum; The Ashley Gibson Barnett Museum of Art, Lakeland, Florida; Freuenmuseum, Bonn, Germany; the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; Osthaus Museum, Hafen, Germany, and Florida Gulf Coast University, Estero.

She is represented by the Harmon-Meek Gallery, Naples, and the Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York.

Selected Works