Page 302 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

FIRST GENERATION ARTIST 299

colorful beauty of nature never became the
main content of his pictures. Rather, in
most of his pictures, when determining the
form of the image and to amalgamate and
concretize its inner framework and life
force he tried to make the contour
increasingly clear by using swiftly
executed, spontaneous and forceful lines.
Again, he tried to control the contrast that
arises between form and space due to
strong boundary lines by trying to be duly
attentive to formal order and balance to
keep the pictorial unity unbroken. It is thus
that even during his apprenticeship he did
not accept any particular style to be the
highest of its kind but rather collected his
sustenance from various methods or styles and began to advance towards the goal of fig. 8.3 Zoo Study,
making an original pictorial language suitable for his own expression. He did not, drawing, 1935
however, neglect the education he received at the Art School, and his process of
focusing on his individual pictorial language originated alongside assimilating his art
school education properly. Thus, we can easily feel the presence of the firm foundation
of the western naturalistic method in the works produced by him in his maturity.
In his student life he showed his unflagging perseverance and single-minded devotion,
extraordinary excellence in the academic style (fig. 8.5).and his capacity to integrate
the style and take it to a new dimension in terms of the sensibility and experience of
a new age which reflected his extraordinary talents in many different ways. Within this
context Principal Mukul Dey took the unprecedented initiative of giving him
employment as a teacher of the Art School when he was still a student of the fifth year.
Actually, due to Mukul Dey’s initiative and special arrangements made by the
Education Department he got employment in the Calcutta Art School as a temporary
teacher in the year 1937. Later in 1938, in the final examinations he stood First in the
60
First Class and thus ended his student life upon which he was awarded a scholarship
by the British Government (for three years). But due to the advent of the Second
World War in 1939, that scholarship was suspended. In the same year (1939), after the
death of Abdul Moin, a teacher of the Art School, Zainul’s appointment became
permanent against his vacant post. Up to the partition of the country in 1947 he was
employed in that position. 61
As a teacher also, along with teaching the students the basic principles of the academic
method, he tried to inspire them to paint in the light of the knowledge and
understanding derived from their own experience. He tried to make the students
understand that not only the presentation of visual forms, but rather connecting them