Mohammad Hadi Fadavi, an Iranian neo-traditional painter, was born in Arak. From his childhood, through one of his relatives who worked in handicrafts, he became interested in the work of market painters and copyists. He started learning the basics of painting with educational books and got involved in oil painting. At the same time, he got acquainted with the works of Van Gogh and Cézanne, and later he would take orders for portraits. 

Fadavi studied Persian literature, saying that literature, especially Hafez, had a significant influence on his paintings. At the same time as the events of 1979 and the cultural revolution, he turned to cinema due to his familiarity with painting and had experiences in various fields such as set design and costume design. In cinema and television, he collaborated with artists such as Dariush Farhang, Ebrahim Hatamikia, and Kyomarth Pourahmad. In a project called "Gallery 9", he studied and copied nearly 100 paintings, including "Doctor Gasche" by Van Gogh. The financial independence and free time provided to him by making a living through cinema allowed him to recover and pursue his artistic ideas in painting. He pursued painting with interest and tried to promote this abandoned art style by inventing a new language. Finally, he devoted himself to the art of painting because he had no middle ground with the economic atmosphere of cinema. His first solo exhibition was held in 1994 in his hometown's Gallery, Arsha. In 2005, he exhibited his works in Niavaran Book City.

Animal motifs such as fish, owl, and rooster play a prominent role in his works. Later, the cypress (tree of life) entered his works in linear form, and horses gradually became the main elements of his paintings. Encountering one of Sharafoddin Hosseini's horse paintings (Qazvin School) in the Hermitage Museum deeply impacted him. This was an introduction to his focus on horse motifs and the study of how they were represented and finished in different periods of Iranian painting history. The result of this investigation period was finally published as an article in the "Shadow Art" magazine.

Gradually Fadavi tried to bring human beings into his frames, and by adopting some characteristics of Reza Abbasi and Kamaloddin Behzad's miniatures, he created a revolution in painting and freed it from self-restraint and repetition. In this way, he moved towards a modern and decorative perception of painting. He defends this quality by admitting that his works are decorative and considers them a conscious feature. Because he believes that art, more than the commitment to expressing a political or social issue, is required to be beautiful and sweet to provide the audience's pleasure, a rule that he follows seriously in his works of art.