The Pathfinder

Bride with a Mirror, acrylic on paper, 1972.

Zainul Abedin's contribution to the modern art movement in Bangladesh is iconic. His childhood was spent in Mymensingh and it is from where his intense love for the countryside and the lifestyle it captured, began. He was famed for his remarkable artistic versatility as well as ability to guide other artists. For five years he studied the British standard of art in Kolkata getting the Governor's Gold Medal. This recognition brought him fame and he managed to develop the style that would one day make him one of the most loved artists in Bangladesh. He aimed at realism, but his craving for lines led to his unique interpretation of everyday life, such as a sunburnt Santal couple or a new bride, waiting with her mirror against a fence, all in red.
His fame came early when he used Chinese ink and packing paper to do the famed Famine Sketches through which he loudly protested against the struggle and strife of the common man on the street. Fond as he was of folk art, he realised its limitations. His work included the private moment of a village woman and powerful figures of men and women struggling in life. He also cared intensely about the preservation of folk heritage.
From the works provided by the Shishu Academy, we have the Shilpachrya's Zainul Abedin's famous famine pictures of the early forties, when undivided India was under colonial rule, and by which he became famous in the Subcontinent and beyond. These are to be seen at the Bengal Gallery, on the occasion of his birth centenary, from December 28 to January 11. The collection is called "Shilpacharya and his outer world of art.”
In the first sketch we see a hungry, starved man, with limbs like bones, licking a packet of food. We can see how hungry he is by the way his tongue, teeth and eyes are looking at the food in the paper, which he has picked up from the footpath. His ribs stick out while his legs are thin as poles. There is a woman with two children. The children have puffed up bellies, ribs sticking out. The girl, in rags, is emaciated.
The mother is in dirty clothes, her hair is askew with neglect and her desperate search for food for herself and children, dominates the scene. Next we see a man, his head covered with a cloth for protection. He has beard and moustache and is sitting crouched on his feet, while his backbone is bent double. He has a dhoti on. Sleeping figures are seen on the pavement at the back. He rests against a pillar.
We go on to see a more pleasant scene, and here we have four people angling from individual boats. Each of them have at least two fishing poles. Some of them wear straw hats, that farmers and fishermen use. All of them are bare-bodied and wear the lungi hitched up. The people appear brown. Next we are confronted with two men carrying sheaves of paddy.
There were 12 artists apart from the Shilpacharya , including Abdur Razzaque, who studied the US with a scholarship. There was also Nazrul Islam, who said at the press conference on the weekend, that he felt great pride in having his work displayed along with that of Zainul Abedin. He added that the master painter enjoyed visiting his students' home such as that of Mohammed Kibria and Murtaja Baseer. Jahanara Abedin, on her part, added that she sometimes put in colours in his incomplete works, which waited to be finished and cleaned his brushes after him. She added that she had come away to Dhaka with her husband, a few months after her marriage, and enjoyed having his students over. They included Abul Barq Alvi and Bulbul Osman. Subir Chowdhury, in his turn related in how he took pains and pleasure to finish Zainul Abedin's first folio.
Abdur Razzaque's works, which were mostly abstract, consisting of splashes and dashes of vermilion, jade, and bunt sienna, had its colours and dashes mingling and merging with superb rhythm. They occupied an entire side of the second room of the gallery. He also had a fishing scene with boats and people, touched up with ruby red and muddy hues along with the essential black. Razzaque had obtained his masters from the State University of Iowa specializing in print making in 1957. He painted landscapes and real life scenes. Some of his paintings, as ones found in the Bengal Gallery, are done in the abstract expressionistic style. He was fond of formal designs and mingling of colours. He received an Ekushey Padak.
The other artists, also students of Zainul Abedin or closely related to him, are Shafiqul Amin, Zunabul Islam 'Nazrul Islam , Mizanur Rahim. Samina Nafis, Arif Ahmed Tanu, Masud Mizan and Manize Abedin.