Sadequain: A Muralist, Calligrapher, Poet and a rare visionary-Last part

Sadequain: A Muralist, Calligrapher, Poet and a rare visionary-Last part

After Sadequain transformed the art of calligraphy into a mainstream art form, most of the known Pakistani artists have followed Sadequain and calligraphic art now dominates the art scene. Sadequain also painted in bold form the poetic verses of Ghalib,
Iqbal and Faiz, which illustrate his love for classical literature.

He belonged to the school of thought, which enriched realism with lyricism. Sadequain wrote thousand of quartets and published them. Sadequain is the only painter who has been copied openly and widely by many painters and even the copies fetch large sums
to the copiers, an irony since the artist himself hardly ever sold his works in spite of offers coming from the royals and the common public.

As an example his masterpiece rendition of Sureh-e-Rehman has been copied widely by many known painters of the modern era.

In an interview he said, “People ask why I don’t paint flowers, butterflies and landscapes? I tell them that I seek the truth and I am after reality. I am not inspired by someone posing against the backdrop of roses in a vase or pink curtains.What inspires
me is a person who has gone hungry for hours and is struggling for survival. The expression that lights his face at the end of the day when he has finally found some scraps, that is what touches me. I am a painter of the expression of reality.” Self proclaimed
“Faqir,” Sadequain was outside society’s worldly greed or hypocrisy and called himself “speaker of truth.”

The brush strokes stopped on February 10, 1987 in Karachi, when the greatest of the painters and calligraphists was just 57. Many have imitated his work since then, but he remains to this date a very class of his own, which cannot be imitated, copied or
reproduced. 

The artist was honoured by Sadequain Art Gallery: Frere Hall –
constructed in 1868, this remarkable historical building hosts the last internationally known fine art work of the late Sadequain.

Since Gallery Sadequain’s in 1990, the hall hosted a number of group and solo fine arts exhibitions, seminars, workshops, two theatres on experimental basis, farshi nashist for small mosharias and ghazaliat programmes.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=18224

Posted by Naveed A Bari on Apr 6 2012. Filed under Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry