In the late 1770s, a British colonial official named Sir Elijah Impey and his wife, Lady Mary, commissioned the Indian artist Shaikh Zain ud-Din to catalog a private menagerie, including various bird species, the couple had assembled at their home in Calcutta. Using paper and watercolors from England, Zain ud-Din, a Muslim from the city of Patna, modeled his work after English botanical illustration, but he also brought to the job his training in the ornate Mughal artistic tradition—and his own distinctive style. Today critics praise the quality of the colors and the composition, in which a bright, simple background offsets the keenly wrought details of plants and animals. “Everything is incredibly precise and beautifully observant,” says Xavier Bray, director of London’s Wallace Collection, which this month mounts the first UK exhibition of works by Indian artists commissioned by officers of the British East India Company.
The expat aristocrats who patronized Zain ud-Din and his fellow artists had been sent abroad to help manage their country’s growing empire, but once there many, like the Impeys, fell in love with the subcontinent, as well as its flora and fauna. “These paintings,” Bray says, “were made into albums to be leafed through back home, on a rainy day, drinking Earl Grey tea.”
History failed to record much about Zain ud-Din’s life beyond his watercolors for the Impeys. But the new show, which includes 99 paintings of nature studies, portraits and landscapes by 18 artists, makes an argument that he and his contemporaries should be recognized on their own merits, as some of India’s greatest painters. “Anything with a colonial air about it is now considered politically incorrect,” Bray says. “But what we’re trying to do is bring back these extraordinary artists who have been almost completely forgotten.”
She exhibited tricolour painting in mandana, a tribal art form of Madhya Pradesh. It took more than 6 months to prepare all the artworks, she said.
Artist Nawab Jahan Begum with her art work | FP Pic
Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh):
Artist Nawab Jahan Begum from Bhopal has used 24 carat gold in a Gond artwork. She said that this was the first time that 24 carat gold was used in Gond art. “I used liquid gold, which is being liked by visitors here. Many people greatly appreciated the tribal art of Madhya Pradesh,” she said
Nearly 17 works of the painter were on display at Kala Spandan Exhibition in Mumbai inaugurated by film actor Anita Raj. The exhibition was organised from November 24 to 27. She exhibited tricolour painting in mandana, a tribal art form of Madhya Pradesh. It took more than 6 months to prepare all the artworks, she said.
Besides, she exhibited three convertible art works. “Three works have 10 different paintings. It was a different work, which was appreciated.” Her Hindi calligraphy artworks were also on display.
Begum has obtained MA degree in drawing and painting. Her signature styles are abstract modern art paintings, which she make using knife and adds gold to it to give it a royal feel and look. She took part in many national and international painting exhibitions and sold paintings in the UK, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Maldives.
She has also made a painting for Taj Lakefront Bhopal. Her works are on display at Bhopal airport and Cymroza Art Gallery in Mumbai.
source: http://www.freepressjournal.in / The Free Press Journal / Home> Bhopal / by Staff Reporter / November 29th, 2022
Rasheed Artist is one among these people in Malegaon, who despite all odds went on to achieve such a position, which is difficult for many even under most favourable conditions
Rasheed Artist – renowned artist of Malegaon
The powerloom factories in Malegaon might have been the only available option for the Malegaonians, the deprived people of the Muslim dominated textile town in North Maharashtra. Yet the amount earned after working in these factories was sufficient till a few decades ago to make one’s end meet easily. This perhaps is the reason why the town has surprising number of poets, laureates, scholars and artists who would work in these factories like petty labourers during the day and then indulge themselves in creative activities till late in the evening.
Rasheed Artist is one among these people in Malegaon, who despite all odds went on to achieve such a position, which is difficult for many even under most favourable conditions. Hanging against the walls of the main halls inside the plush bungalows owned by the dignitaries in India as well as in various other countries in the world, Rasheed Artist’s paintings are point of attraction for visitors since many years. Fabulous achievement indeed! However the journey that led to these walls was not easy, and for Rasheed Artist, it needed a matchless and unprecedented effort since childhood.
Malegaon in the sixties though had quite a good number of schools, managements could hardly find a good drawing teacher during those difficult days. Under these circumstances having a professional artist to teach the art of painting to students using watercolor was beyond one’s imaginations. However Rasheed Artist was resolute. He was just 15 but when he failed in fulfilling his strong desire for commercial art in the corridors of the education campus, he decided to quit schooling.
“It was my craze for paintings that forced me to drop out of the school in the early age”, he recalled.
Holding brush in one hand and color box in the other, he began roaming here and there to satisfy his lust for Art. It was then that Wad Saheb, a Director at Camel, the stationary giant famous for manufacturing pencils, watercolor and other stationary items till recently, came to Malegaon. Wad Saheb, as Rasheed Artist described the renowned artist from Shimla, visited Malegaon as part of his nation-wide talent-search program.
“He visited Malegaon for consecutive years in the seventies, shared valuable tips with the students like us and organised painting and drawing competitions to encourage us”, Rasheed Artist said adding:
“In his second visit to Malegaon in 1968, I won the competition. Wad Saheb was thrilled watching the improvement I had attained in one year.”
In Wad Saheb, Rashid Artist found a mentor. But he was not a lord and any further continuation from now had become unbearable for his parents. To bear the expenses hence Rasheed Artist began working in a local powerloom factory along with his father – without of course sharing hardly any money with him for regular household needs. Rasheed Artist would work for three to four days in a week and the moment he would get some cash would rush to Mumbai and wander around the city’s art galleries in his humble and simple attire which is part of his persona even now.
“Jahangir and Taj Art Galleries in Mumbai were my favorite hunting grounds”, he recalled.
His encounter with the masters of the time – including the legendaries Jahangir Sabhawala and Sarvayya at these galleries are still the precious moments of his life.
“My comments and discussions would make them dumb. They could not believe a humble looking person like me had such a sound knowledge of canvas paintings.”, he said.
Rasheed Artist
In 1970, Rasheed Artist permanently moved to Mumbai,and started working on banners, sketches and art works for the upcoming films at V. Shantaram’s Mumbai Central Film Department. He was earning reasonably well now. But to earn was never in his priority list. Therefore he decided to leave Mumbai and return back to Malegaon where his talent soon witnessed a surprising turnaround.
“Innovation and creativity have always been my passions. Back in Malegaon, I began working on popular couplets of Urdu poets and tried to portray them in my paintings”, he recalled.
There was no looking back after that. He soon acquired perfection in transferring Urdi couplets over the canvas with amazing interpretational skills. Hundreds of canvas paintings portraying Urdu couplets by the poets like Mirza Ghalib, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Meer Taqi Meer, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Rahat Indori, Shabina Adeeb, Parvin Shakir and others were ready in quick succession. Subsequently, it became customary for the Malegaonians to gift Rasheed Artist’s paintings to the dignitaries who would visit the town.
While the one gifted to veteran musician Naushad painted on the famous couplet Aabadiyon main dasht ka manzar bhi ayega; Guzroge shaher se to mera ghar bhi ayega is still greeting the visitors in his hall, Shabana Azmi has put the one presented to her father Kaifi Azmi portrayed on Aik woh keh jinko fikre nashaib o faraz hai; Aik hum keh chal pade toh behr haal chal pade in her office.
Rashid Artist with his paintings.
Majrooh Sulatnpuri was lucky to get two paintings. Of these two, the one on Sutoone daar pe rakhte chalo saron ke charaag; Jahan talak yeh sitam ki siyah raat chale is in Canada and the other on Phir koi masloob hua sare rahe tamnna; Aawaze jaras pichle pahar taiz bahut hai is part of the splendid collection at Dubai Urdu Library.
Simultaneously, Rasheed Artist also perfectly worked on portraits of the people he loved the most. They included freedom fighters, world leaders, artists and poets. When Dilip Kumar visited Malegaon in 1980, he was thrilled to see his portrait. The portrait presented to him is now greeting the people at his Bandra residence. The portraits of Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini and Mirza Ghalib presented to Ferhad Parizaad of the Iranian Cultural Centre in Mumbai in 1985 are in Iran.
Today Rasheed Artist is the ultimate and globally recognized name when it comes to canvas paintings. In fact, he is perhaps the only artist in the Indian sub continent who portrays Urdu couplets over the canvas with such a sound interpretational skills. Yet Rasheed Artist has few more dreams in his life.
“Apart from writing a book on Sketching and Painting, it’s my dream to transfer the history of Urdu Ghazals from Ameer Khusroo till date over the canvas”, he said in a determined tone.
Rasheed Artist at this stage of his life is finding it easier to run the expenses of his family. However to run his dream project is of course an expensive affair. Moreover, looking at him who resolutely turned down the offers by popular art galleries in London and Australia to auction his paintings, it seems impossible for him to make any compromises merely for the sake of arranging funds needed to work on these projects. Yet one thing is certain. The stubborn in him would not let him sit idle. It would be really interesting to see how he achieves these targets.
[An abridged version of this article was published by The Times of India, on August 25, 2010 in its Nashik edition.]
source: http://www.ummid.com / Ummid.com / Home> India> Life & Style / by Aleem Faizee, ummid.com / June 13th, 2009
Five full minutes is what it takes for me to tear myself away from the allure of this painting I find myself staring at. Decked up in traditional jewellery and dress, it’s a portrait of a girl, looking back as if beckoning you to follow her, and yet there is nothing beyond her. Complete unto itself, the portrait doesn’t need a backdrop for contextualization. Your eyes must not travel elsewhere and the intrigue in her eyes ensures that it does not. The bold strokes defining dropped shoulders, tousled hair, lips that might break into a smile any minute, and eyes gazing intently at some unknown familiarity- Hana Bawa, a Mumbai based artist, paints the stuff of dreams. It’s not just the technical perfection of her paintings but the sheer magic of their intrigue that pulls you in.
Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu : By Hana Bawa
A 27 year old single mother, Bawa is a self- taught painter. Almost like that of a child prodigy, the story of her artistic journey begins with her perfectly complex childhood drawings. She was already drawing animal figures at the age of seven years. Born into a family of largely sportspersons, Bawa stands out for her artistic talent that finds some resonance only with her grandmother’s interest in crafting. Thanks to an unconventional family background, she never had to face the typical Indian parents’ pressures and diktats to pursue only a certain kind of career, and she remembers not to forget it, as she adds “I am immensely thankful to my family for being extremely supportive of my decisions and career choices throughout.” A graduate in sociology, she also pursued a fashion designing course but an intense passion for art propelled her towards the career path she eventually ended up paving for herself. It is her philosophy of “grow(ing) in whatever you choose to do” that makes her exclaim “I’m still learning” even after having sold numerous pieces of her stunning art.
A mother and her baby
Hana Bawa has not just made commissioned artwork, but her paintings have also been exhibited in Minnesota (USA) apart from various art galleries in India, and Afghanistan – no mean feat for an artist who climbed this high sans a formal art training. When asked about her participation in the said exhibition on the theme of ‘Afghan Culture’, she tells me that it came about largely because of the fame she found in Afghanistan. Well- known in the foreign territory for her detailed paintings depicting Afghan culture, Bawa was asked by the curators of the exhibition to send her artwork that celebrated it. Following naturally from this impressive success story, my questions turn back, once again to her journey and how she made it this far without ever receiving a formal training. Probed further, she reveals that she learnt to colour, quite late in her life (at the age of seventeen) and that too, from the internet. Colours opened up for her, a richer and brighter world that was otherwise largely inaccessible. Colours also lent an emotive dimension to her art, because now she could use different kinds of strokes as well to create different effects, as is evident from her paintings.
A mosque by Hana Bawa
Hana Bawa’s bold and confident strokes sweeping the surface of the canvas neatly are characteristically hers, and hence find a place in almost all the portraits. Asked about the painters who inspire her, Bawa counts three off the top of her head, out of which it (rather unsurprisingly) is Vincent Van Gogh who receives the first mention. Julie Dumbarton, a Scottish landscape painter and another Turkish painter Remzi Taskiren are the other two artists she mentions. Though widely separated from each other in terms of their style, cultural background and subjects they choose for their paintings, all of these artists excel in their skilful use of bold strokes. Van Gogh – in creation of post- impressionistic art that laid the foundation for modern art; Dumbarton in her effective employment of the technique in order to create a riot of colours on a harmonious landscape and Taskiran in his deployment of bold strokes in his portrait paintings to create an effect not very different from what Bawa’s achieves. Apart from these artists, Bawa also adds ‘cultures from around the world’ and ‘women’ to her list of influences and inspirations. With so much for a thought, I expect to hear of the politics that informs her paintings. Painting mostly women from middle- eastern cultures I assume carries a certain kind of latent political symbology, given the kind of times we are living in; but Hana vehemently denies any conscious political underpinnings to her alluring portraits.
She says “No, nothing political. I’m just drawn to these cultures because I cannot actually experience them, so I live them through my paintings and also allow others to access the same through them. For this reason, I do not paint portraits, I try to paint emotions. So, I focus a lot on the eyes – the windows to the soul.It is the look that captivates, not the colours, or the sketch. I paint anything that has a culture and meaning associated with it.”
Hana Bawa
We end the conversation with Bawa telling me about her four year old showing exactly the same skills as she did at his age, if not better. As I sit down to write this, and the world witnesses Bawa’s phenomenal skill and artistic genius, I smile with the hope that there’s another young life who might further enliven the world she has created and aims to create through her art – a world of emotions, passion, dreams and intrigue.
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