ART FACTS: Reflections of struggle for independence

A few of our artists after independence in 1947 has taken up struggle for independence and the personalities involve during the process as the subject of their paintings. The story of Pakistan, its struggle and its achievement, is the very story of great human ideals, struggling to survive in the face of great odds and difficulties.
Pakistan came into existence with horrible loss of life and property, communal riots with millions of Muslim refugees pouring in from India, and many crises that threatened to overwhelm the newly formed state.
Mirza Sajjad Hussain (Late) was one of such artists who chose national personalities to make their portraits. He is still one of the top most artists in this medium. He had the gift of concentration; each of his works is a masterpiece of human expression and bears the stamp of his unique style of execution and colour use.
Most of the portraits he made are of national luminaries and therefore have a historic importance of their own. His portrait paintings of Shah Latif, Waris Shah, Allama Iqbal, Nazrul Islam, Tagore, Voltaire, Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Goethe, Virgil, Homer, Kali Das, Rumi, Hafiz, Ghalib, Khushal Khan Khatak, Tolostoy and Quaid-e-Azam have bring much more fame to him.
Professor Sajjad Hussain was greatly interested in the personality of Quaid-e-Azam and had painted more than a dozen portraits of him now scattered throughout Pakistan in different institutions. Mirza strongly believed that face is the mirror of oneself and went on painting faces, capturing the essence of the internal and external characteristics of various personalities. Thus, his portraits give out not only the person, but his time.
Mirza Sajjad Hussain has genuinely contributed in raising the level of portrait painting to highly refined and specialised art. He painted portraits for full 70 years till his death at the age of 87 years. There are no other artists with such a vast experience today that can parallel his quality of portrait work.
Saeed Akhtar is an aspiring artist of diversified skills. As a senior artist he has developed his expertise in the field of portraiture. Drawing is another source for his expression along with painting. His sensibilities of form, texture and colour including black and white are par excellence. His drawings offer three dimensional as well as two dimensional forms in a skilfully detailed manner.
Recipient of President's Award for Pride of Performance Saeed Akhtar's artistic endeavours in true spirit can be viewed through his portraits of Quaid-e-Azam. He is famous for his most realistic portraits of Quaid-e-Azam non other can do so. Between 1967-92 he painted portraits of the Quaid-e-Azam for Major Officer Messes of the Pakistan Army, Air Force, Navy, Presidency, Prime Minister House, National Assembly, State Bank Building, Provincial Assemblies of Balochistan and Punjab, Cabinet Room, Karachi Portraits of eminent personalities of Indo-Pakistan for the Prime Minister Secretariats and State Guest House, Rawalpindi.
In 1988 he painted the largest portrait of the Quaid-e-Azam, for the Republic Day Parade, Rawalpindi. Again in 1999 he painted the largest Painting of the Quaid-e-Azam and his companions 10 x 30 feet in oil on canvas. He also designed relief of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah for One Rupee Coin which was issued on 14th August, 1998.
He also painted portraits of the famous personalities involve during the independence struggle as well as the common people who endured the tense and unforgettable partition experience. He painted portraits of Allama Iqbal, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Moulvi Abdul Haq of Bengal for the Lahore Museum in 1989. He was commissioned to design Pakistan's largest stamp issue in 1990 consisting of pencil sketches of personalities from the freedom movement of the country, the pioneers of freedom.
The complex human emotions are communicated effectively in his portraits. The myths and events in their lives form the perfect subject matter for his artworks. The subconscious mind is a treasure house storing an entire vocabulary of our visual and other sensory experience and Saeed Akhtar uses this in his drawings with dexterity. The firmly embedded visions in his mind take shape on paper. The ordinary faces of men and women in his portraits speak their own stories mostly in deep thought, making the artwork a serious affair.
Jimmy Engineer one of the great philanthropist artists of our country whose passion of life is the welfare of human kind, in his much celebrated series of paintings based on the theme of the 1947 holocaust depicts the sufferings, bloodshed and sacrifices faced by the people of the sub-continent at the birth of Pakistan. It is amazing that Jimmy Engineer had no knowledge of the trauma of partition as he was born in 1957 at Loralai, Balochistan. But his Pakistan Independence series make everyone believe that he was part of the partition holocaust. The series include murals as he had also been trained as a muralist at the National College of Arts (NCA). It is indeed a great effort intended to capture the history in images for the coming generations to ponder and demonstrate the same courage and desire for sacrifice and dedication to the country.
His Pakistan Independence series of paintings on the theme of the great migration of the Muslims in the sub-continent in 1947 truly depicts the human miseries and tragic moments speaking loudly the sacrifices and struggle made by the millions of Muslims and hard earned independence. This series was aimed at our coming generation so that they should get aware of its past.
During his long career of over thirty five years Jimmy creates a painting world with passion, translating human conditions and miserable souls into coloured imagery. His paintings are truly a mix of sentimental statements and emotions recorded on canvas. The minute details and bold brush strokes along with fine lines work show his command on his work. [email protected]