February 10 marks Sadequain's 30th death anniversary: Sadequain was an energetic, innovative and restless artist who emerged on the art scene of Pakistan in mid 50s. He came dramatically into prominence when his work was displayed as "The Exhibition of an Unknown Artist" in 1955 at the residence of Shaheed Suhrawardy, then Minister for Foreign Affairs.
He was truly social interpreter. His artworks address a common theme of social and cultural values. Most of his paintings especially murals depict man's struggle, his achievements and a persistent quest for knowledge and to discover his endless potential. His murals are full of activity, ideas, and they read like an unfolding story about their particular theme.
A self-taught artist - Syed Sadequain Ahmed Naqvi was born in 1930 at Amroha (India) and migrated to Pakistan after graduating in 1948 from Agra University. He was a thematic painter he always painted an idea or a literary subject. He achieved fullest expression of an idea in his "Saga of Labour" mural at Mangla. For he was a painter of ideas, he never painted a portrait except once (printed on the cover of "Pakistan" Quarterly Vol. XI No. 3). Although his early work shows him capable of doing good figure drawing, for some reason he adopted an almost caricaturist style in which the limbs hang limply and the outlines are wavy, the size exaggerated and the mass ponderous. In his last mural he did not even paint the hands and feet and made them look like flippers.
His work is not derived from any eastern or western source. He has his own style which was basically linear, in the tradition of all Oriental art and this is emphasized by his use of markers as a medium.
Sadequain introduced the painting of large murals and created some thirty of such artworks, of which five are in India. All of his murals are figurative except five in Pakistan and one in India are calligraphic. Most of his murals adorn the halls of public buildings: The State Bank of Pakistan (100 x 12 ft), The Power House at the Mangla Dam (200 x 30 ft), Lahore Museum, Lahore Aligarh Muslim University (70 x 12 ft), Banaras Hindu University (70 x 12 ft), and Geological Institute of India (70 x 25 ft), Frere Hall Karachi, Powerhouse at Abu Dhabi and Punjab University Library
By going through his paintings it is obvious that Sadequain felt deeply the sufferings and trials of man and constantly struggle to use his art for promoting the cause of goodness and righteousness, progress and enlightenment, peace and happiness.
He was attracted to tragic subjects. He used allusive forms and symbolic images to convey his message and concerns towards the society. He adapted cactus as a symbol to depict labour, struggle and persistence against natural elements of resistance and triumph of hard work.
During sixties Sadequain portrayed human condition in numerous drawings series, which were actually commentaries on prevailing social and cultural state titled as Cobweb Series, Crow Series, Christ Series, Hope Series, and Sun Series.
He made many puzzle "modern" pictures portraying ambiguous images of people looking like things and things looking like people. "The Last Supper" is a good example of such work. His unique strokes, style, and colour schemes give distinctive characteristic to his work.
In 1961 he entered the prestigious Biennale of Paris with the painting "The Last Supper" where he was adjudged "Laureate Biennale de Paris" by an international jury. In this a row of human figures was suggestively built up in abstract form through the use of crescent shapes or curved blades or exaggerated cactus thorns instead of realistic figures.
In 1960 he was awarded Tamgha-e-Imtiaz (medal). He also received President's Medal for Pride of Performance in 1962 for his extra ordinary work in the field of art.
Sadequain painted thousands of paintings, drawings, and murals during his lifetime. He loves to distribute his work as a gift to institutions, individuals, acquaintances, and total strangers. Therefore you can find his work from hut to a palace. He hardly ever sold his work and mostly gave it away; sometimes his work was simply taken, and sometime even stolen.
Sadequain also paid homage to three legends of classical literature - Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz by illustrating their poetry on canvas. These works show his deep affection for art in all forms.
Sadequain had done 25 illustrations of the verses of Ghalib in large oil paintings for the first time ever, in 1968 - coming forty years after the publication in 1928 of Chughtai's illustrated edition of Ghalib's verses. With each illustration of Ghalib's verses, Sadequain had appended a small panel on which the relevant verse was calligraphed in Urdu.
And in February, 1971, he made some large drawings, paintings and calligraphies based on the verses of the poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz to mark his sixtieth birthday. Aftaab-e-Taaza, was the illustration of lines by Allama Iqbal he made to show his reverence towards Iqbal.
He made paintings of the mellifluous and picturesque chapter of the Holy Quran - 'Sura Rahman'. He was one of the greatest calligraphers of our time and helped transform the art of calligraphy into serious expressionist paintings. By now, almost every artist has created some work in this field. In 1972, he wrote the magnificent 'Sura Yaseen' of the Holy Quran on 260 feet long wooden panels and donated it to the Lahore Museum.
In the first half of 1973, he completed the splendid ceiling of the central gallery of the Lahore Museum, depicting the starry heavens.
The whole of 1979 was devoted to calligraphy which culminated in a large calligraphic mural that he made in Abu Dhabi. From November, 1981 to December, 1982 he was in India and during this time he made huge murals, first at the Aligarh Muslim University (in copper cut outs) and then calligraphic and figurative murals at the National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad Deccan and later at the Banaras Hindu University, and finally he executed in very large size the 99 Beautiful Names of Allah (Asma-ul-Husna) in the Indian Institute of Islamic Research at New Delhi.
In early 1986 he began work on the gigantic project of paintings to cover the whole ceiling of the hall of Gallery Sadequain, 140 x 70 feet and also the cornice bordering the ceiling. This huge mural entitled 'Al-ardh-o-was-samawaat' (The Earth and the Heavens) was made up of figurative paintings, decorative designs and some calligraphy. It was to be painted on 100 hardboard panels of 8 x 4 feet but he had barely completed 87 panels (total area 2,784 sq. feet) when he departed for eternal life.
(Photos courtesy: Eye for Art Gallery, Karachi)
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.