Earlier this month, the India Art Fair had a special focus on neighbouring countries. Now, the Rashtrapati Bhavan is getting ready to welcome celebrated Bangladeshi painter Shahabuddin Ahmed as a resident artist.
President Pranab Mukherjee, who first saw Ahmed's work in Kolkata in 2015, invited the 67-year-old artist to also display his work for public-viewing from February 18 to 22.
Shahabuddin Ahmed [Picture courtesy: Facebook]
Ahmed, who has lived in Paris for 40 years, is celebrated as the 'national pride' of Bangladesh. He is a 'Mukti Joddha' or ‘platoon commander’, who fought in the liberation war when he was 21, alongside Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh. Young Ahmed was the first to host the flag of Bangladesh at Dhaka Radio office (known as Pakistan radio back then).
Ahmed, whose works have been shown around the world, says the war guided his path. But contrary to what many believe, he doesn't 'paint war'. "I want to depict human suffering in defiant postures, borderline situations, in which the individual has to reach his limits. I don't choose death as a subject because deep down the nature of my interest is rather optimistic. And in the cracked attires of my characters, that some consider to be the reflection of the 'freedom fighter' or the athlete, is nothing more than the manifestation of the state of one’s suffering,” he says.
“Shahabuddin experienced a threatened identity in Bangladesh that he vigorously liberated in 1971. This period of his life, both dramatic and full of hope, has undoubtedly affected his artistic path and forged his character,” says Gerard Xuriguers, an art critic from France, about Ahmed's work. “However, he did not turn into a militant painter, but simply a painter, who always cared more for painting than for the subject of his painting.”
In his artistic career, he has examined the pathos of war, struggle of the people of the sub-continent and the freedom movement of India and Bangladesh through portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and Rahman, among other prominent personalities.
