Iraj Eskandari was born in Kashmir in 1956. He learned the basics of painting in Mashhad from Mansour Dollou and at the same time got familiar with carpet drawing. After finishing high school, he was admitted to the art school of decorative arts and went to Tehran to study painting. At the same time as the revolution in 1978, Eskandari finished his bachelor's degree in painting and went to France to continue his studies. During a one-year training course, he got acquainted with mural painting styles and after that he returned to Iran. Iraj Eskandari completed his master's degree in art research at Tehran University of Art and received a doctorate in art research from this university in 2005.
Along with painting, Eskandari has always been in the academic environment and has been teaching art. He is a faculty member of Tehran University of Arts. Iraj Eskandari's works were exhibited for the first time in 1972 at the Mashhad Chamber of Commerce. After the revolution, his works have been presented many times inside and outside of Iran in the form of individual and group works. Iraj Eskandari's first appearance in auctions dates back to January 2019 at the Tehran auction house.
In the beginning, Eskandari's works were in the service of the revolution, but in the following periods, distancing himself from the social and political view, he inclined towards abstraction. The simplification of elements and dominance of geometric expression in the representation of elements and the composition of space are the main characteristics of these works, which are rooted in his long-standing interest in Iranian carpet motifs, paintings, and buildings. Most of these works have lyrical themes. In creating paintings, the painter goes to ancient literature and uses the romantic poems of poets such as Nizami Ganjavi. Ruyin Pakbaz considers this period of Eskanadri's works to have a symbolist tendency: "He often combines simplified human and bird figures with geometric shapes and creates various textures on the surface of the work." In this course, Iraj Eskandari has an innovative and mixed approach to materials. His paints are often made on the basis of binder glue and sit thickly on the surface of the canvas. In some of his works, he has continued this path until reaching pure abstraction.