Zainul Abedin: Modern Art Pioneer
Zainul Abedin was a Bangladeshi artist who is considered one of the pioneers of modern art in the country. He was born in Kishoreganj, Bangladesh in 1914 and studied art at the Calcutta Government Art School before moving on to the University of Calcutta. As a son of a police official, he lived a simple life. It was in high school that he developed a knack for drawing and painting; it came naturally to him.
Throughout his career, Abedin was known for his powerful and expressive paintings, which often depicted the lives and struggles of the poor and marginalized in his country. He was particularly interested in depicting the struggles of the peasantry, and many of his paintings feature images of rural life and the harsh realities of poverty and inequality.
This evocative drawing shows a family struck by the Bengal Famine of 1942. Painted in Chinese ink on paper in broad brush strokes.
Abedin was also deeply committed to social justice, and he used his art as a way to draw attention to the plight of the poor and oppressed.
In addition to his paintings, Abedin was also known for his murals and frescoes, which can be found in several public buildings in Bangladesh. He was a master at using color and composition to create powerful, emotive images that spoke to the heart of his viewers.
In the 1940s
Few artists have shown a passion for the masses with disarming simplicity as Zainul Abedin with his Bengal famine sketches.
What Abedin did was not just document the famine, but in his sketches showed its sinister face through the emaciated and skeletal figures of the people fated to die of starvation in a man-made plight. He depicted this inhuman saga with very human compassion. What he produced in a series of brush and ink drawings was to become iconic images of human suffering.
"The Chinese ink that he used to use made the brushes hard, and Zainul used to smash them with a brick to soften them,"
Murtaja Baseer recalls his teacher making do with what was available. Baseer believes that the hard-brush technique came from the manhandling of brushes. Baseer remembers Abedin's motto for life,
"You build yourself to be a person so that when somebody praises you, you will smile, and if somebody criticizes you, you will smile."
1946
He marries Jahanara. Jahanara Abedin recalls,
“Zainul was a good man, and what others couldn't draw using paint and ink, he could using ashes of cigarettes."
1948
He helped establish the Institute of Arts and Crafts (now the Faculty of Fine Arts) at Dhaka University.
Today, he is considered one of the most important artists in the history of Bangladesh, and his work continues to inspire and influence artists around the world.
