Page 180 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

PRINTMAKING 177

published. The illustrated page was of better quality than the pages of the main text
and the pictures were printed from a different press and at the bottom of each one the
name of the press was printed, for example, Ashutash Press, Dhaka. 21
This perhaps proves that there were presses for printing pictures in Dhaka at that time.
But the famous editor Mizanur Rahman (the editor of Mizanur Rahmaner Troimasik
Patrika) in one of his articles on his reminiscences has said that there were no notable
block making establishments in the Dhaka city. In his memories of 1949 he described
a few presses in Dhaka where printing was done in letterpress. There was just one
block-making establishment in Islampur in front of the Lion Cinema named B. S.
Block Company. The blocks were not made through any scientific process. They were
blocks made by the use of hammer and chisel on hot lead. There is a small description
22
on the subject of blocks in the autobiography of artist Aminul Islam. Reminiscing on
the events of 1948 he says that for making blocks things had to be sent to Kolkata. 23
Starting from the British period before ’47 to the ’80s there existed in Dhaka quite a
few lithopresses, at present they have disappeared due to the overwhelming
domination of the offset press. These litho presses printed anything from film posters
to the colored pictures of magazines and periodicals. Although at present not much
information and proof can be found to substantiate this.
The Partition of the Country, the Beginning of Dhaka-Based Art Education and
the Foundation of Academic Printmaking
In 1947 India was partitioned. The option was given to the Hindus and the Muslims to
select their own country. In this context many Muslims of West Bengal came to East
Pakistan and many Hindus of East Pakistan went to West Bengal. Dhaka slowly began
to acquire the character of a big city as the capital of East Pakistan. Many new
institutions were formed. In 1948 under the leadership of Zainul Abedin the Art
Institute was established. The founders were Zainul Abedin, Quamrul Hassan,
Safiuddin Ahmed, Anwarul Haq and others. Safiuddin Ahmed had by then earned
sufficient renown throughout India as a printmaker. When the Art Institute was
founded there was another teacher called Habibur Rahman. He had been a skilled
teacher of woodcut in Kolkata.
There was no example of any other art education institution in Dhaka city at the time.
But that is not to say that there were not one or two regional art institutions in a small
way – for instance, in 1904 in Khulna under the leadership of Shashibhushan Paul was
founded the Maheshwarpasha School of Art, the institute which Zainul Abedin also
admitted was the first educational institution of fine arts of East Bengal. Some
specimens of art practice in Dhaka town during the rule of the Nawabs can be found,
for example, associated with an artist named Alam Musabbir who with the
patronization of Nawab Nusrat Jang executed quite a number of paintings of Eid and
Muhurram. The period of their execution was from the end of the eighteenth century
to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Before the partition of the country, it was
Kolkata that was the recognized center of artistic and cultural exercise. Although