This research tries to reconstruct in the light of several field surveys and from different points of view, how the practice of painting - in relation to a prestigious ancestral legacy - has evolved in Iran in the 20th century. The study begins in 1911, when the first School of Fine Arts was created in the country, and ends in 2009, the year of the inauguration of the First International Fadjr Festival of Plastic Arts. In that period of time, the different cultural policies that have guided the development of pictorial art, the major institutions orchestrating artistic education, the successive circles of painters that gave life to varied aesthetic trends, are presented. Thus, the history of the pictorial movements developed during this period is coupled with a study of the socio-political organisation of the art worlds. This recollection of the recent pictorial history provides an opportunity to analyse, based on the discourse of nineteen artists interviewed in Tehran in 2008 and 2009, the representations that these creators have nurtured of the State, the art and their role in the society. This also allows to question the adaptation of artistic modernity in the country. Finally, it contributes to consider the implications of the socio-political issues raised by visual arts, especially painting, in contemporary Iran.