Jafar Rouhbakhsh is a painter who built a bridge between Iranian art and modern art, therefore he could be considered as one of the painters of the Sagha Khaneh movement. Jafar Rouhbakhsh studied at the Boys School of Fine Arts from 1957 to 1960. In 1963, he entered the Faculty of Decorative Arts in Tehran and graduated with a bachelor's and master's degree in decorative painting and interior design architecture. A number of his works were showcased in 1959 in the group exhibition of Reza Abbasi Hall and also in Farhang Hall in Tehran. He held his first solo exhibition in 1965 at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Tehran. After that, his works were displayed in numerous group and solo exhibitions.

In the early 1970s, he went to France to study and research in the field of decorative arts. He spent some time at one of the French art centers in sculpting, hand-printing, and Engraving. After the Islamic Revolution, he returned to Iran and lectured in the primal principles of design and printing techniques.

Rouhbakhsh generated a bridge between the Iranian painting's legacy and modern art by using rug patterns, old handicrafts, and folk figures in an abstract context. His works could be divided into three main periods: the 1960s strongly influenced by Oriental arts, in the 1970s influenced by his trip to Europe, Western motifs appear in his works. the third period, which began with a return to Orientalism, and had continuity to His last works, so that in the last ten years of his career, he created artworks with a theme of flowers and chickens, with decorative figures and bright colors like jewelry. His art is a median between two different essences in Iranian painting, a bridge between Sagha Khaneh and abstraction.

Rouhbakhsh says about the inspiration of traditional art nowadays: "there is no specific measures or regulations in how much should be influenced by traditionalism or how much should be enclosed in new horizons and explored" I believe that the artist's masterstroke is a proportionate perception of these two, and the measure of his success also depends on these two factors."