Mehdi Hosseini was born in Kashan in 1943 and came to Tehran with his family as a teenager. After completing his studies at Tehran High School of Fine Arts, he went to the USA and studied painting and printmaking. Hosseini received his bachelor's degree from the Chicago Institute, USA in 1968 and then entered the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York (1970) for his master's course. After returning to Iran, he taught at the Art University and retired as a professor in the 2010’s.

Hosseini is a painter and drawer. His works are flat and minimalistic and have a specific color palette. The colors used by the artist include blue, gray, and pea shades, which is partly influenced by the personality of Hosseini and the Miniatures of the Timurid school, especially the Baysunghur Shahnameh.

Mehdi Hosseini has taken part in more than 80 exhibitions, and his first appearance in biennials dates back to the third Biennale of Tehran in 1962. So far, this artist has participated in various auctions, including the Tehran auction, and in addition to teaching and painting, he has also curated various exhibitions at the Iranian Academy of Arts and Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. This painter has also been active in the field of writing and translating, and as one of the great visual artists of Iran, he was honored and awarded at the 7th Fajr Visual Arts Festival.