Zainul Abedin, the Great Artist (English Paragraph)

Zainul Abedin, the Great Artist

Zainul Abedin was the avant-garde of modern art in Bangladesh. He was internationally acclaimed for his artistic style and visionary qualities. As an artist he was distinct in every respect. He made his own ink from charcoal and used cheap packing paper for sketching. A wide range of his works brought him fame and recognition. Of them, ‘Famine Sketches’ stand out as the most important. It is a series of sketches on the harsh famine of 1940. He drew sketches of famishing people who were victims of a manmade starvation. His scroll painting Manpura is another example of his humanistic approach to art. He drew this in memory of the hundreds of thousands of the dead souls in the devastating cyclone of 1970. In 1969, the art exhibition Nabanna came up with a 65 foot long scroll painting which contributed greatly to the then on-going movement against the Pakistani regime. Nabanna was a portrayal of the rural East Pakistan in phases from abundance to poverty. Besides adding fuel to the fire of the already heightened non-cooperation movement, this exhibition served as an artist’s protest against political and economic repression of a people. It also set a milestone for art in demanding cultural as well as political freedom. Thus Zainul Abedin championed the cause of patriotic humanism through his drawings and paintings. His patriotism becomes clear through his designing of the pages of the Constitution of the country. The maestro had shown his talent during his early age when he earned the Governor’s Gold Medal in all-India exhibition in 1938. That morning shows the day proved once again true when this great artist from Kishoregonj became our Shilpacharya, the master of art.