In Memoriam

Ismail Gulgee was one of the most prominent modern masters of Pakistani art. He born in Karachi in 1926 and began studying art at the Mayo School of Art in Lahore in 1944. After completing his studies, he spent several years in Europe, where he was exposed to contemporary art movements like Abstract Expressionism. He later returned to Pakistan and became a founding member of the Karachi Art Council.

Gulgee’s early works were heavily influenced by his training in traditional painting techniques and his interest in Islamic calligraphy. He often used bold, angular brushstrokes and vibrant colours to create abstract compositions that evoke the complexity and beauty of Islamic geometric patterns. In the 1970s, Gulgee began to experiment more with mixed media, incorporating elements like gold leaf and glass fragments into his paintings. He also began to incorporate figuration into his work, often drawing inspiration from the people and landscapes of Karachi.
Throughout his career, Gulgee was committed to promoting Pakistani art and culture. He served as the President of the Society of Fine Arts in Pakistan, and was a key figure in the development of the National Art Gallery in Islamabad. Ismail Gulgee died tragically in 2007 in a brutal home invasion. However, his legacy as one of Pakistan’s most important and internationally respected artists lives on through his iconic works that continue to inspire and captivate art lovers around the world.

Asim Butt was a painter with practice rooted in activism. His works includes painting, public art & performance art. In the short span of his life, he produced a diverse and critical body of work within and outside his studio. Asim’s work engaged events of the everyday, social and political dialogue, narratives of life and decay through an indication of the trauma that lived within him. By expanding and regenerating imagery and techniques, he underlined the importance of the sacred and spiritual, myth and reality. The physical elements of his practice – from paper to charcoal, canvas to paint, and sketchbooks which were presumably reworked year after year – are as symbolically resonant as they are wide-ranging. In 2011 a year after his death the Mohatta Palace Museum organized a retrospective exhibition showcasing the expanse of his practice and in 2014 this body of work and his legacy were extensively documented in a monograph titled ‘Rebel Angel’.

Usman Ghauri was artist and educator with a diverse practice including painting, sculpture and print making. Ghauri was born in Sukkur in Sindh, and was a graduate of the National College of Arts in 1996 and soon after he started teaching printmaking at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS), Karachi. He left for Australia to pursue a Master’s in Art from the University of New South Wales, Sydney and after graduating in 2000, returned to teach at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. He put together two box print-folios, ‘Different Drummer’ in 2009 and ‘Out of the Box’ in 2010 — the outcome of a workshop by the Australian artist Michael Kempson. He was working towards another “boxed” show for November 2011, the title of which — ‘Cast Rituals’ — he had coined. It was to be an exhibition of 10×10 boxes enclosing sculptures by various artists.

Usman Ghauri will always be remembered for the contributions he made to society in general through his kindness, generosity and helpfulness, and his vision to keep print-making alive as an art form and to build a legacy for future generations to follow. This show would have given him the resources he needed to start work on his studio dream.

Mohammad Shafi born in Karachi in 1930. He had a difficult childhood growing up in underprivileged situations. Yet despite the difficult circumstances Shahi Aqueel was determined against his odds; he was self-taught, and was passionate about poetry and writing in Urdu and Punjabi. He changed his name to Shafi Aqeel when he was young, and his career as a writer, poet, journalist, and art critic quickly followed. He also published a novel and short story.

Even though he lived and worked in Karachi, his first collection of short stories, Bhookay (Hungry), which was published in 1952, got him into trouble with the law in Lahore. He used his friends the renowned writers of the time Maulana Abdul Majeed Salik, Agha Shorish Kashmiri, and writer and playwright Saadat Hasan Manto as witnesses in his defense.
Shafi Aqeel was an art critic as well, his insight into the realm of art was hailed as “exemplary” by poet and play director Ayub Khawar. He was friends with several artists, including Sadequain and Ahmed Pervez, poets, and writers including Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum, and Hafeez Jalandhari.
In addition to writing pieces on literature and art for the national Urdu-language newspaper Daily Jang, he edited and co-edited a number of publications. Two of Aqeel’s thirty books were collections of his Punjabi poetry. He also published 30 books in Urdu.

Right up until his passing, he published book reviews in the Urdu newspaper Daily Jang.

Imran Mir was a sculptor, designer, and advertising innovator whose creations affected his peers and formed his persona. He travelled for Canada after graduating from the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts Karachi in 1971 to study at the reputed Ontario College of Art and Design. Mir returned to Pakistan in the late 1970s and displayed cutting-edge art that wowed both artists and art critics with his daring instances of minimalism and modernism.

Mir became known as an experimental artist over the years because he ignored convention and rebuilt his approach through ongoing evolution and change. He adopted the title “Papers” on modern art because he regarded each body of work as serious as writing a theoretical paper. As a result, the First, Second, Third, and so on, until his final Twelfth Paper on Modern Art. Mir was a firm believer in the value of a strong design aesthetic in the commercial world, and he made it easier for graphic artists and designers who came after him to advance in their careers.
In 1987-88, he established the first design team for a major publishing business, receiving the INPA (International Newspaper Publication) honours for being the first to introduce computer design in advertising. He was also the first fine artist to use technology to make art, over 30 years before anyone else. In 1987, he founded Circuit, his own full-service advertising agency, breaking new ground in Pakistan’s advertising sector. Imran Mir was also one of the founding members of Karachi’s Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture.

Pakistan’s most celebrated sculptor Shahid Sajjad was a self-taught artist who had an illustrious career spanning over 40 years. He was critically acclaimed and showcased his works in many exhibitions. In his youth, Shahid travelled much of the world on a motorbike, and followed up with two years in the Chittagong hill tracts of Bangladesh. Amongst the trees his thorough understanding of wood as a medium of sculpture began. Shahid`s involvement with art manifested early in his life, and developed naturally through stages. First through calligraphy that came easily to him and won him the approval of his teachers in school. Then he discovered drawing and covered every available surface with sketches. His natural talent in art demanded an outlet, and he began to work at an early age in the studio of an advertising agency, first in Lahore, then in Karachi.

Shahid’s ability earned him considerable success in his field, at the same time he was painting. Yet he never felt truly in tune with the medium of paint. He loathed his routine, and finally, set off to discover his true métier. He found it in the Louvre Museum, Paris, in 1963. Coming across a wooden statue carved by Gauguin, he became aware that sculpture was his true calling. In the 70s, Shahid became interested in bronze casting, and while travelling in Japan, he met the distinguished Japanese sculptor Akio Kato, well-known for his work with bronze casting. From the Japanese artist, Shahid learned the lost wax techniques of bronze casting. Shahid Sajjad referred to his collection of sculptures as “my primitives,” taking himself as an example of mankind and reflecting the hidden beings within all of us.

Shahid Sajjad’s works spanning from 1963 to 2010 was showcased in a retrospective exhibition in both Lahore and Karachi.

Mansur Salim’s experimental practice pushed the boundaries of media and genre. He was a forerunner of installation art in Pakistan. Salim, a painter, scholar, and educator, earned his MA in general history with a concentration in archaeology from Karachi University in 1988. He eventually worked as a lecturer at his alma mater until 1996. He has taken part in excavations at Harappa, an Indus Valley archaeological site, by the University of California, Berkeley. In 1987, he participated in a field archaeology course offered by the Pakistan Archaeology Department. In 1983, he also earned a diploma in fine arts from the Sindh Board of Technical Education in Karachi. Salim’s artistic path began with flashes and glimpses from a metaphysical dimension, which he translated. had an experimental practice that pushed boundaries of medium & genre. He was among the pioneers of installation art in Pakistan. A painter, researcher and educator, Salim completed his MA in general history with specialization in archaeology from Karachi University in 1988. He later joined his alma mater as a lecturer until 1996. He has participated in excavations by the University of California at Berkeley at Harappa, an Indus Valley archaeological site. He took part in a field archaeology course conducted by the Pakistan Archaeology Department in 1987. He also completed a diploma in fine arts at the Sindh Board of Technical Education, Karachi, in 1983.

For Salim, his art journey would begin with flashes and visions that he would have when he slept from a metaphysical plane which he translated on to media.
Salim would say “[It is for the viewers] to study my works and decipher the meaning of my flashes. I am not a Surrealist or a mystic artist, I am simply a conduit for knowledge and ideas.”
Aside from vibrant pictures, performance, and animation, his flashes would take the shape of sound. For example, he claimed, he heard the sound that Quran archaeology is a powerful subject, and this flash he experienced took him into archaeology, which then was creatively mirrored in his work. Salim frequently employed the trick of separating space to suggest the coexistence of two separate realities. Several of his paintings feature a porthole-style opening within the canvas’s frame. This “window” seems like an oval gap in the stonework, as if a hole had opened up. The formation of parallel worlds that would normally have little in common has a lot to do with Salim’s views of space and time.

In a retrospective of his work titled In Remembrance of Mansur Salim held at Koel Gallery, 16 oil-on-canvas paintings allowed the viewer to gain acquaintance with Salim’s unique idiom. His canvases were rarely cluttered. The human figure hardly ever played a central role in his paintings. Instead, there was always strong geometrical associations and a preoccupation with space; perspective, play on scale and division of the plane were strongly evident. These would give the impression as though he wanted to juxtapose the enormous with the microscopic and, in the process, collapse the difference between the two.

Akbar Naqvi was a renowned art critic and the author of various art history publications, including the famous ‘Image and Identity: Fifty Years of Painting and Sculpture in Pakistan’ plus monographs on Sadequain and Shahid Sajjad.

Dr. Naqvi was born in Haijpur, Bihar, India, on February 21, 1931. He received his master’s degree in English literature from Patna University, where he also briefly taught. He received his PhD in English from the University of Liverpool. Dr. Naqvi is known to have become interested in art when he was 12 years old, he tried his hand at painting as a young man but realized that he was more attracted towards the critical rather than the creative side of art.

Despite the fact that his critical writings on art in Pakistan began to appear in magazines and journals early in his career, Dr. Naqvi’s first substantial contribution in the form of a book, Image and Identity: Fifty Years of Painting and Sculpture in Pakistan, was published in 1997. traces the history of Pakistani art against the background of the Indo-European art of the colonial era and the Mughal and pre-Islamic arts of ancient India. A year later, he released Pakistan: The Making of Art, a textbook spanning art history from the Stone Age through the 1980s.In 2007, came his book on Shahid Sajjad ‘sculptures: Collected Essays. In 2011 he released Khujwa Recollected, a collection of biographical pieces, followed by publications on other artists.

He continued to contribute to Pakistani art through his critical essays and articles in newspapers and magazines. His efforts gave Pakistani artists the exposure and voice that it required in a budding art landscape and have become a major resource for art education and documentation.

Tassaduq Sohail was a Pakistani painter and short story writer. He was born in Jalandhar, British India in 1930. Following the partition of the Indian subcontinent he migrated with his family to Karachi, Pakistan in 1952. Sohail wrote short stories in Urdu. It was his first successful artistic route and one that would come to play an important role in his art. The work Honoré de Balzac, a French novelist and playwright renowned for his multifaceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. This became a constant resource for the artist’s imagination and creativity.

In the early 1960s he moved to England hoping to get away from a life of poverty and pressures of home. He earned his living through odd and menial jobs till he stumbled upon an opportunity to take evening classes in painting at St. Martin’s School of Art.
Primarily known for his paintings, his first artwork appeared in an exhibition of Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1978, and later his work appeared at Bonham’s international art exhibition in 2007 which helped him to be recognized as one of the prominent artists of Pakistan regularly exhibiting nationally and internationally. A gallery within the National Museum, Karachi is dedicated to his works.

He produced most of work about animals and portrayed them as superior creatures besides portraying dogs and birds. He also depicted social condemnation and non-conformance. His artworks also depicted human forms, men with beards and women as mostly nudes; with expressions of fears and desires. His is at times also compared to the “Naïve Art” his childlike simplicity and frankness. In Tassaduq’s work his paintings are rebellious, unaccommodating and prolific and very much in your face in their subjects; his paintings are storyboards narrating tales of human’s darker side, a wry sense of macabre humour.

Tassaduq was inspired by artists like Max Ernst, and used a decalcomania technique, allowing blots of dilute ink, created after pressing a piece of glass on the paper to suggest the image ahead. The final result in pen and ink was a concentrated, spidery persistence of line erupting from darkness often describing the foetid underside of the buoyant life he saw around him.
Sohail took inspiration from Persian poetry, particularly the poetry of Sheikh Saadi, a rich repository of Hikayat fables, narratives and parables. Here birds and animals somehow possess the faculty of the human mind and are the carriers of advice for man. Sohail was a great pet lover and animals were always symbolic in his practice. He would feed the Kite eagles around his home in Karachi even towards the end.

Hafiz Muhammad Iqbal Ahsan Khan, known as Ibn-e-Kaleem was born in 1946 in Langah Chishti Family, Mohallah Qadirabad Multan. He got his primary education and Hifz-e-Quran from his grandfather Hafiz Muhammad Abdullah Chishti. He also studied Persian & Arabic from his grandfather. He got regular training of the Art of Calligraphy from his father Late Muhammad Hassan Khan, Kaleem Raqam.

Ibn-e-Kaleem devoted his entire life to the art of calligraphy and established a new style of calligraphy called as “KHAT-E-RA’ANA ( خطِ رعنا)”. In 1976-77, Ibn-e-Kaleem conducted extensive study on seven distinct forms of Islamic calligraphic styles, for which he was acclaimed internationally. He participated and held multiple exhibitions in several major cities around Pakistan. He was honoured with the title of “Khattat – e – Haft Qalam” by the president of Pakistan, Dabistan – e – Khattati, in 1977.

He also authored two books on Calligraphy, one of which was printed in 1977, under the name of “Tareekh Fan-e-Khattati” and the second book was printed in June, 1978 which is known as “Naqoosh-e-Ra’ana” alias “Muraqqua-e-Khattati”.

Sheikh was born in 1975 in Karachi, Pakistan. She attended Kinnaird College in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan, and graduated with a B.A. in English literature and psychology in 1995.Saira earned her Ed.M. in Art and Art Education from Columbia University in New York as a Fulbright Scholar in 2009. She received her BFA in Miniature Painting and Sculpture from the National College of Arts (NCA). She has received the Myers Art Prize from Columbia University, as well as the Shakir Ali Award, Sir Percy Brown Award, and Haji Sharif Award from the National College of Arts.Sheikh returned to Karachi after getting her teaching degree, where she became an associate professor and the head of the liberal arts programme at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture.

Sheikh met colleague Omer Wasim while working at the school, who would have a big effect on her art and with whom she would interact frequently. Political messaging and activism, particularly in Pakistani political climates and events, influenced their collaborative art practice significantly. The two felt that it was necessary for them to perform their role as artists by documenting the history and movements taking place in their surroundings. The Western political interests in Pakistan and how their influence and power are affecting Pakistan, as well as the economic discrepancies they noticed inside Karachi, Pakistan, juxtaposing the poorest and richest portions of the city, were specific influences in their art.

lnam Raja was an independent Karachi based artist having graduated from the Karachi University. He was devoted to Illustration and was a prolific Digest Artist; illustrating for magazines and a number of Urdu digest novels; an integral part of the local digest culture. One of his memorable shows was participating in a group show in Karachi just for Digest artists.
As a painter, Raja explored female figure highlighting facial expressions, emotions, and various postures of female body. His paintings were sensuous, with flowing and textured lines that give a feeling of body-mind connectedness. The forms are transparent, with the play of light revealing what is buried behind paints and lines. He would state that his artworks would speak with each in a unique way. Raja distorts, abstractions, and realistically touches his paintings, fusing expressionism, impressionism, and tradition with textural elements.

Shakeel Siddiqui was a prominent painter who introduced hyperrealism in Pakistan.

He received his Diploma in Fine Art Painting from the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts, Karachi in 1975. He also studied at the Art Students’ League in New York from 1970 to 1972. At the beginning of his career, he focused on figurative work and portraits in oil on canvas. Later in life, he moved on to still-life, working in oil on canvas. From the late 70s, Shakeel’s concentration moved towards super realism, also known as hyperrealism. The visual illusion of Super-realism involved in the details with which Siddiqui reproduced the textural quality of any material or object; silk, denim, wool, wood or lace was unique.

According to eminent Pakistani Art Critic Marjorie Hussain

“Shakeel Siddiqui’s objects are warm and bodied, curtains move, clothes retain the form of the wearer, bricks are weathered, and each composition tells a story”.

Shakeel Siddique was also an art educator; he had taught at the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts, Karachi from 1986 to 1989 and at the Dubai International Art Centre from 1992 to 2004. He had many group and solo exhibitions of his work in Pakistan, the UAE, the UK, Canada and The Netherlands, as well as participated in numerous group exhibitions around the globe.

Of his work for KB17, Shakeel Siddiqui painting was a super realistic painting of a noticeboard, captured the third effect of a noticeboard which everyone has experienced in their lives. His extensive body of work is part of many art collections both with collectors in Pakistan and abroad.

Jamil Naqsh was among Pakistan’s most prominent artists.

Jamil Naqsh was born in Kairana, British India in 1939, and later migrated to Karachi, Pakistan. In his early teens, he had the experience of travelling alone through Chittagong, Calcutta and Colombo. He learned a lot about life during that harsh journey. He also gained a great respect for the art traditions of the past while travelling. His journey’s impressions were to later influence and nature his thinking and practice. He initially trained as a miniaturist under former National College of Arts professor Ustad Haji Sharif in Lahore beginning in 1953 but left soon after without a degree as he felt the experience not the qualification was more important.
Between 1958 and 1960, Naqsh began to paint out of doors. He painted Karachi and its environs, completing over 150 watercolors, most of which were destroyed in 1959 when monsoon floods hit Karachi.

Naqsh was and intrinsically remains a figurative painter. The human form gave him the greatest aesthetic satisfaction. He believed that all responsible artists eventually return to the great nucleus of their cultural traditions; whilst adding something new to them. He had his first solo exhibition in 1962 at Lahore Arts Council followed by the Karachi Arts Council exhibition where he was awarded a gold medal. In 1967, an exhibition of fifty-one of Naqsh’s paintings was held on the theme of Pigeons.

For Naqsh birds represented domestic harmony drawn from memories of his childhood in Kairana. By the mid-60s, Naqsh has evolved a distinctive personal style that influenced his contemporaries. Delicately layered particles of paint created infinitely subtle tomes. The female form became a leitmotif; a full-figured, classical form. Juxtaposed with pigeons it was an inspired coupling. His paintings of both pigeons and nudes became part of many collector’s acquisition both in Pakistan and around the world. His works have been auctioned in the most prestigious of auction houses internationally.

Jamil Naqsh moved to the England in 2012 never to live again in Pakistan till his death in 2019 due to pneumonia at the age of 79. He was the recipient of many awards and exhibited in Pakistan and Internationally. There is a museum dedicated to his work in Karachi.

Madiha Aijaz was an artist and educator with a practice in photography and film. Aijaz was an Assistant Professor at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and received an MFA in Photography from Parsons with a Fulbright Scholarship. She photographed railways, devotional towns and public libraries, studying spaces and communities that have become peripheral to civic life, but which by tenacity and chance continue to survive. She is known for her book ‘Call to Conscience’ and her documentary ‘These Silences Are All the Words’.

Madiha was a participating artist of Karachi Biennale KB17 in 2017 with her photographs and video installation titled These Silences Are All the Words – which explored the public libraries of Karachi, Pakistan, against the backdrop of the city’s changing landscape. Focusing on librarians who have been working for years in traditional institutions, Aijaz works tells the stories of an aging intelligentsia. The conversations with both librarians and the library’s users reflected on the shift of language from Urdu and its poetic and literary history to the ambition and individualism associated with English.

Many of Aijaz’s works offered a perspective on a country sharply divided along linguistic lines. Her work contextualized the complexity of the postcolonial state and its ambitions surrounding the English language, not only as the legacy of the Raj, but also as a tool for authority and social mobility. Using photography, film and text, Aijaz combines different media to present a city’s history from a literary point of view.

Mr. Jalaluddin Ahmed’s contribution to promoting art of Pakistan is tremendous, he was an institution of art knowledge. Born in Lucknow, India in 1925, he graduated with a Masters in English Literature and taught at the Aligarh Muslim University. As a civil servant by profession, he served in the information ministry that gave him the opportunity to travel extensively fueling his love and promotion for the arts.

In 1954, he published his first book, titled Art in Pakistan which gave a peak into visual arts; not only did his book describes the work of Western, but also East Pakistani artists, including Zainul Abideen and Kibriya; women artists such as Zubaida Agha and Laila Shahzada and others; including Ali Imam, Shakir Ali, A.R. Chughtai. Followed by Contemporary Painters of Pakistan in 1958.

He was made the assistant director in the Department of Films and Publications and later appointed its director general. In 1972, he took a six-month leave to research at the British Museum on contemporary arts in the Islamic world, at the end of which he was transferred to Cairo as the press attaché in the Pakistan embassy. While stationed in London, England both Jalauddin Ahmed and his wife who were connoisseurs of art and literature and having done his research, embarked on publishing an art magazine in English called Arts in the Islamic World.

Ahmed and his wife both became active members of Foundation for Museum of Modern Art [FOMMA] Trust under whom began a series of publications in 2003 — monographs on a number of Pakistani artists, such as Ali Imam, Zubeida Agha, Laila Shahzada, A.R. Nagori, Rabia Zuberi and Lubna Agha. In addition to that, articles of well-known art writers, Salwat Ali and Marjorie Husain, have also been published in book form by the organization.

He would say that the objective of FOMMA is “to promote the study and intelligent appreciation of art and architecture in the country and to set up a museum of modern and contemporary art as also a well-equipped art library”.

Omer Farid, a pioneering artist in both his style and throughout his life, was a Pakistani artist in a league of his own. His unconventional painting style employed optical illusions to pique the viewer’s interest in the artist’s intended message or what interpretation of his work is appropriate. His works in pen and ink, acrylic, poster paint, and other media always stood out; they lured the observer into a maze of minutely detailed webs of patterns from which he drew inspiration from.

In his 50-year plus career, Farid used the medium of fine ink, oil, acrylic and on occasion a combination of all three. His deft brush strokes would seek to free idle thoughts from their morbid tethers, unleashing a parade of elusive metaphors and along the way evoke genius at play. To paraphrase Descartes: “I paint, therefore I am…” was how Omer Farid approached his paintings; offering a glimpse into the intricately webbed mind of the artist. He would often recall that the opportunity to play with optical illusions was what really lured him towards painting.

Qudsia Azmat Nisar was a highly prolific painter, credited with the introduction of non-figurative modern abstract art in the country, by using the medium of watercolour and drawing.
Her style of painting was uniquely her own; innovative, creative, deceptively childlike yet skillfully balanced with linear ï and vibrant washes, translucent and sensitive in places and very distinctive within a medium difficult to control. Prior to Nisar’s methods the watercolour techniques by other artists were used to depict still life, landscapes, seascapes and figures. Nisar used, instead, a subjective, imaginative, multi-layered abstract vision to create hundreds of original new images, vibrant with inventive forms, shapes and beautiful colours, subtle tones and nuances.

Nisar was also deeply committed to the education and training of youth in diverse artistic disciplines, including watercolour, oil painting, sculpture and crafts.
From 1977 to the early 1990s, she served as head of department and lecturer at the Punjab University’s Department of Fine Arts, Lahore and from 2006 to 2010, as chairperson of the Department of Fine Arts and lecturer at the Islamia University of Bahawalpur. She served as a principal of the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts at the Arts Council of Pakistan in Karachi for eight years. She also provided guidance to students at the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology at Jamshoro, which recognized her services with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. Her paintings and her services to education have been highly praised in several books by critics and depicted in many documentary films. She also received a number of national and international awards, including the President’s Pride of Performance Award in 2018.

Her work was viewed and highly applauded at exhibitions and workshops in Pakistan, the US, Canada, Italy, Belgium, Egypt, China, Oman, Nepal and elsewhere.

A globally renowned painter and ceramicist, Masood Kohari resided between Pakistan and France, where he had migrated to in the 1960s.He had “the skills and sensibility of a natural-born artist,” according to art critic Nasir Shamsie, while being largely self-taught. He was a prolific painter yet, later in his practice, Kohari developed an obsession with clay, which inspired him to experiment with the novel medium. He quickly earned the reputation of being a Pakistani ceramics pioneer. His contributions to the new subject led to the display of 200 paintings in exhibitions in Paris and Normandy.

He made history by experimenting with indigenous clay practices that he had learned about in Gujrat and Gujranwala during his numerous trips to Pakistan. He relished the burning heat of ceramic kilns to work alongside local craftspeople, forgetting the suffocatingly lush surroundings of Normandy, France. In the course of this procedure, Kohari honed his skills in the creation of glass and metal pieces that would later become known as his “Fire Collages” or “Crystal Collages”.

Masood remained a perfectionist to the core, and would create masterpieces out of any material he chooses to deal with.

The most prominent sculptor, painter, and former chair of the Pakistan Arts Council Rabia Zuberi was born in pre-partition India and received her degree from Aligarh Muslim University and then then continued her education at the Lucknow College of Arts and Crafts alongside her sister Hajra before relocating to Pakistan in 1961.It was here where she developed and created the majority of her art practice. The Mina Art School, named after their father Anis Mustafa Mina Zuberi, was founded by the two sisters in 1965; later, the name was changed to Karachi School of Art. Rabia’s use of sculptures in the 1970s as part of her art practice initially examined the human anatomy, later in the 1980s, the focus shifted to gender issues and in the ‘90s to the city: Karachi’s socio-political turmoil which resulted in a series titled ‘Quest for Peace’. Her artistic endeavors involved the analysis of the human anatomy in a simplified manner that alluded to abstraction. She also considered design to be a component of sculpture and approached it through the lens of gender issue. Her reclining figures sought inspiration from modern English artist Henry Moore (1898-1986). Zuberi often painted her non-metallic materials, such as malleable clays and strong fiberglass, to imitate a bronze finish using the lost wax casting process that required materials, equipment and a dedicated practice.

Throughout her career, Rabia Zuberi was recognized for her contributions to the art world, receiving numerous awards and accolades. In addition to the Pride of Performance Award, she was also awarded the Tamgha-e-Imtiaz in 2004 and the Sitara-e-Imtiaz in 2016. Her works have been displayed at several exhibitions and galleries in Pakistan, as well as internationally in countries such as the United States and India.

Beyond her artistic achievements, Rabia Zuberi was also involved in promoting and advancing art education in Pakistan. In addition to establishing the Karachi School of Art, she also served as the chair of the Pakistan Arts Council and was a member of the National College of Arts in Lahore. Rabia Zuberi passed away in 2019 at the age of 80, leaving behind a legacy of artistic innovation and a commitment to promoting art education in Pakistan. Her works continue to be celebrated and admired by art enthusiasts and critics alike.

Born in Hyderabad, Sindh in 1976, Mohan Das’s early art education came from his craft-oriented teachings; working as a cinema hoarding painter, truck and rickshaw painter mentored by Ustad Bhola, Ustad Shamsher, Ustad Yameen, late Ustad Asghar Ali, and Ustad Latif who were all seasoned rickshaw painters of Hyderabad and Karachi as well as the eminent Ustad Fatah Hale Phuto in Hyderabad. Mohan completed his BFA (hons) and MA (hons) in Fine Arts, in 1999 and 2002, respectively, from the University of Sindh at Jamshoro.

Always an achiever and naturally gifted with skills in drawing and painting, after graduation Mohan Das balanced his art practice with his professional career, teaching in Hyderabad for ten years initially and then moving to Karachi. He was also affiliated with Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture for its Diploma program and participated in various exhibitions and workshops. For Mohan Das, his art was a reflection of his early history of art learning; history of the rickshaw, a history of the drivers as well as his own personal history.

In 2008, he was the recipient of the special Sadequain Award and also awarded by the PNCA in 2010. A great mentor for young art students he established Fakhta School of Arts which he headed till his passing.