Leyly Matine Daftary is one of the Iranian modernist artists. In 1956, She went to England to study painting and sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Arts at University College London and then at the Camberwell College of Arts. In 1960, she returned to Iran and lectured on sculpture and sculpting at the Fine Arts Faculty of Tehran University until 1965. Her works were exhibited in the second, third and fifth Tehran biennials, and received an award in the fifth biennial. She held her first solo exhibition at Borgez Gallery in Tehran in 1966. In 1976, she participated in the 8th International Connie Surmer Painting Exhibition. Matine Daftary's Artworks have been showcased in numerous solo and group exhibitions in and outside of Iran. Matine Daftary's first appearance at the auctions dates back to October 2008 at the Christie's Auction House. 

Leyly Matine Daftary's early works depict an expressionist style. Her education in England coincided with the establishment of the minimalist movement, which led her personal style to simplicity and the presence of flat colors and primitive forms. She used soft and pure colors, especially white, and simple forms to express her Art Style. The empty spaces of the canvas in her Artworks play an important role to create balanced and calm compositions. Her themes are formed in a solid and precise context, including simple subjects like single-faces and daily objects. 

The three most important periods of her career are early collections, minimalistic fish paintings, and figurative ones. Her early collections depicted tree trunks with fresh foliage in a different simple expression. In a period when she was painting fish using simple colors, the maturity and the fracture and angularity of the lines simply doubled the effect. Figurative paintings and mono-faces are subjects of her other works which, with the simplicity of pen, line and color, have created a balance of equality in the whole work. She also has created satirical works using the Silkscreen method in other periods.

"I often don't know what I want to paint," said Leyly Matine Daftary about the creation of her works. which means when I start to paint without any previous thoughts, or if I have thought about that, in the end what is drawn is not what I intended to draw. It has always been something else and very different from its original thought.” Matine Daftary had lived in Paris since 1978 and died there.