The 90th birth anniversary of Zainul Abedin, the founder father of Bangladesh art, was observed in a befitting manner in Dhaka and Mymensingh, his place of birth, with a retrospective exhibition of almost all of his major works, an international seminar, memoirs, competitions and festivities. In Bangladesh, he is revered as ‘Shilpacharya’, the master painter, as a mark of respect towards his pioneering role in initiating the practice of painting in Bangladesh.
Zainul Abedin was not only the first major Muslim artist in Bengal in the modern times, but remains the most internationally celebrated artist of Bangladesh till today. In fact, Abedin belonged to three different nationalities in different phases of his life and could be termed as property of, besides Bangladesh, India and Pakistan as well. He earned considerable fame at an early age in India, and after the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, played the pioneering role in initiating the modern art movement in the then East Pakistan. He worked in Karachi and Peshawar, cities of West Pakistan in different capacities and later on continued his leading role in the artistic affairs of the newly-born state of Bangladesh. Thus, many of his important works are in public and private collections in India and Pakistan, and a majority of them remain unknown to viewers and scholars. It is very likely, that a majority of works have migrated to unknown destinations abroad and may not be reached ever. Even the collections of his works in Bangladesh are not properly identified and many of them are in danger of being lost, damaged or not protected and preserved properly. There is also the case of works being sold in the art market under his name, which raise serious doubts regarding their authenticity.
Bangladesh Shilpakala (Fine Arts) Academy, National Museum and Bengal Foundation joined hands to organize the biggest show of Zainul Abedin’s works held ever, on the occasion of his 90th birth anniversary in Dhaka, in December 2004. It was almost a month-long festival, which not only included a huge show of his 574 works at three different venues, but also an international seminar on him. Also held was an exhibition of Bangladeshi folk arts and crafts which he was so fond of, musical presentations by folk artists, children’s art competition, reminiscences by his colleagues and students and an excursion to Mymensingh, his birthplace. In his lifetime he had himself established the ‘Zainul Gallery’ with a portion of his work on the bank of the river Brahmaputra. The river had always played an important part in his childhood and remained a constant source of inspiration for his famous river-scapes. The exhibition largely consisted of three major collections: those of the National Museum, and the personal collections of Mrs. Zainul Abedin and Abul Khair Litu of the Bengal Foundation. A few pieces from other private collections were also included.
It is true that the major portion of the exhibition consisted of his ‘sketches’ or ‘studies’, done in pencil, charcoal and pen and ink. Not many of the exhibits were ‘finished’ paintings. The major bulk of his paintings consisted of sketchy watercolours with a few paintings finished in oils. One could take this as an insufficiency of the show, but on the other hand, this could also be taken as a revelation of the true spirit of Zainul Abedin’s legacy. Abedin, the maestro of drawing, was displayed at its best with all his superb draftsmanship, control and power. This was perhaps for the first time that even his close-colleagues and admirers could see for themselves such an exquisite display of masterful drawings by the artist.
The exhibitions were a feast for those who still possess the taste for naturalistic depictions of the everyday life in this age of installations and performance art by visual artists. Fortunately, also on display were drawings from almost all phases including his interesting studies of land and people of places such as Mexico, Palestine and Egypt.
This could well be a wonderful learning opportunity for beginners in the field to study the original examples the techniques and devices of a master of line. The prime attraction of the show as expected, were his great famine sketches and two long scroll of drawings done during the tumultuous years of the 60s and 70s. It is interesting to note that both were done at different phases of his life, whereas the former belongs to the very early phase of his career, the latter come from the last part of his life.
Zainul Abedin needed grand events of human upheavals to let his emotions burst out and his brush in a flurry of powerful lines and bold strokes. While he has done a great number of landscapes in different mediums, but when human conditions were in question, Abedin was able to release the highest degree of his talent in drawing them. His famine sketches, are already too well known to be discussed in detail, but it is to be noted here that those were products of a huge human tragedy that occurred in Bengal in the 1940s. So were the two scrolls, one being done as a reflection of the peoples’ upsurge of 1969 and the other a reminiscence of the great cyclone of 1970. Both the famine sketches and the scrolls contained not only records of those events in history, but much more, the protest of the artist as a viewer against the powers who played from behind the scenes and allowed the tragedies to happen. This compassion and sympathy for the common people whom common people whom he knew from his childhood was, in fact, not only the central focus of his all artistic endeavours, but also the driving force behind the philosophy of his life. Simple drawings with ink and brush on ordinary paper can arouse feeling of a timeless humane bondage. This was the greatness of Zainul Abedin’s drawings that have acquired an extraordinary quality that continue to attract and enchant us to this day. His watercolours with scratches of black ink had become a trademark of his landscapes and bear a similar vigour and spontaneity. The show, also included his experimental works, his attempts to synthesize folk art traditions with modern trends, semi-abstract and abstract experiments, cartoons and graphic works.
The most important aspect of Zainul Abedin’s artistic career is that he almost single-handedly changed the mode of the Indian modern art trends of his time from the depiction of religious, historical or literary events in a sentimental mode and a spiritual aura, to the expression of real and contemporary life in a realistic mode with a materialist perspective. He was the first of the Indian modern artists to depict the life and struggle of the rural common people from a non-sentimental, secular and objective viewpoint. He could well be termed as the pioneer of a new realistic trend in modern Indian art which has succeeded in discarding the poetic romanticism of the Bengal School and replaced it with an awareness of political and social conditions.
His major works, the famine sketches and the two scrolls– ‘Nabanna’ and ‘Manpura 70’, were done almost entirely in monochrome (patches of colours were used sparingly only in Nabanna), and could be termed as displays of his extraordinary drawing skills rather than ‘finished’ works. The dominant theme of these works is man’s struggle for survival against extreme adversities caused by nature and man himself. Abedin depicts his man in distress but not defeated by the conditions and gives his human form a certain kind of monumentality and eternal quality which makes him not merely a representative of a certain situation, but the symbol of a timeless entity. These drawings have, perhaps, prompted the famous art critic Eric Newton to comment in 1952: “Here one can see the combination, which one had thought almost impossible, of orient and occident. This synthesis of the documentary eye of the west and the contemplative mind of the east is perhaps the essence of his art”.
The grand show, the seminar papers, discussions and reminiscences all put together was a grand tribute to one of the greatest sons of the soil and patriarch of Bangladeshi art, Zainul Abedin.
Abul Mansur is a professor of Art History at University of Chittagong, Bangladesh. He has authored and co-authored books on art and related issues in Bengali and English and has published numerous articles in international journals since 1984. He has also written monographs for many renowned artists and art exhibitions in Bangladesh and abroad. Institutions in several countries, including Pakistan, have invited him to present papers, curate shows, and conduct workshops.
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