Bahman Mohasses was born in 1931 in Rasht. The Mohasses house consisted of approximately 15 families who were land owners of Lahijan and were in the trade of tea and silk and lived in the Pordsar neighborhood of Lahijan.According to Hossein Mahjoobi, “All Mohasseses had strange personalities, but Bahman seemed to be the most complex and unique of them.” In his autobiographical documentary Fifi Howls from Happiness, Mohasses mentions that he is descended from the Mongols on his father’s side and the Qajars on his mother’s side.
He was a cousin of the celebrated Persian illustrator and cartoonist, Ardeshir Mohasses, residing in New York.At age 14, he learned painting by apprenticing with Seyyed Mohammed Habib Mohammedi, who had studied art in Moscow at the Russian Academy of Arts.He moved with his family from Rasht to Tehran, where he attended Tehran’s Faculty of Fine Arts. During the same period he joined the “Cockfight Art and Culture Society” (Anjoman-e Khorous Jangi), established by Jalil Ziapour, and was, for some time, the editor of the literary and art weekly “Panjeh Khoroos” (Rooster Foot).
