Home ›› 30 Dec 2022 ›› Show Biz
Marking the 108th birth anniversary of internationally-acclaimed painter Shilpacharya Zainul Abedin, a three-day festival titled ‘Zainul Utsab’ began yesterday at Charukala of Dhaka University (DU). Faculty of Fine Arts (FFA) has arranged the event featuring seminar, cultural event and exhibition.
The inaugural ceremony of the three-day festival followed by an award ceremony was held yesterday at Charukala. DU Vice-Chancellor Prof Md Akhtaruzzaman inaugurated the three-day Zainul Utsab, while Education Minister Dr Dipu Moni was present as chief guest.
The prestigious ‘Shilpacharya Zainul Abedin Award 2022’ was also handed over to three art luminaries - former DU FFA Dean Professor Emdadul Haque Mohammad Matlub Ali, eminent artist Shahid Kabir and Indian contemporary art historian, art critic, and curator Raman Shiv Kumar. The three-day festival will conclude tomorrow.
Besides, Department of Fine Arts of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy (BSA) lead by Syeda Mahbuba Karim placed floral wreaths on the grave of the Shilpacharya in the morning.
Zainul Abedin, who was born on December 29, 1914, in Kishoreganj, was a key figure in the formation of the Dhaka University Faculty of Fine Art (FFA) and the Folk Art Museum in Sonargaon, Narayanganj.
Zainul Abedin earned global respect for his 1943 illustrations of the Bengal famine. He visited Palestinian camps in Syria and Jordan in 1970 and made 60–70 paintings of the refugees there, adding just another example of his caliber as a modern, international artist.
During his childhood, he discovered his love of art while a young child frolicking by the Brahmaputra River.
His motherland, Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), welcomed him back after he graduated from the Government Art School in Kolkata in 1932. However, shortly after the Indian subcontinent was divided in 1947, he permanently departed Kolkata and came back to his own motherland in Bangladesh.
The Dhaka Art Institute was subsequently founded with active help from Zainul Abedin, who was appointed as the institute’s principal in 1949. The institute was later developed into Dhaka University’s Faculty of Fine Art.
He retired from the Dhaka Art Institute in 1967 and was conferred the honorary title of Shilpacharya (great master of fine arts) by the institute.
Prior taking the mantle of Shilpacharya, Zainul Abedin received two years of training from Slade School of Fine Art in London and developed a new style of art called the ‘Bengali style’ featuring folk art forms with their geometric shapes including the usage of semi-abstract representation and primary colours.
However, he lacked the sense of perspective, realising the limitations of folk art, and went back to nature, rural life and the daily struggles of people to make art that would be realistic but modern in appearance, thus being the pioneer of modern artistic style in the subcontinent.
Known for the simple yet majestic projection of natural and social hazards, Zainul painted the 1970 Bhola cyclone that devastated then East Pakistan, portraying the effect of the cyclone through his painting ‘Monpura’.
He also founded the Zainul Abedin Sangrahashala, a gallery of his own works at the Shaheeb Quarter Park on the bank of his nostalgia-infused Brahmaputra River in Mymensingh in the same year.
The revered artist passed away in Dhaka on May 28, 1976 after losing his battle with lung cancer. He was buried beside the Dhaka University Central Mosque.
