Page 303 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

300 ART AND CRAFTS

to the feeling or mood was the genuine artist’s ultimate goal. Just as he tried to make
the students understand this, he also tried to give the students a clear idea about the
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indispensability of exaggeration and distortion to represent the inner qualities and
essence of the visual form or figure. 63
At the initial stages of his life as a teacher he became engaged in book cover-designing
and regularly illustrating various periodicals and newspapers besides painting. In that
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age illustrations in periodicals and newspapers were generally printed by blocks. For
low cost printing black color and lines were used in various ways and different
intensity and by leaving off and covering the white surface of the paper, bringing in
different tones and light-and-shade to create the image or scene according to the
expression demanded by the subject. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the
experience that Zainul gained from these involvements from the beginning of the
forties played a special role in also gradually making his original artworks devoid of
redundancy, thoroughly accomplished, dominated by lines and free of complexity. The
best example of this is his Famine series executed in 1943 (figs. 1.16, 8.6). It should,
however, be noted that unlike his work done previously, these were not completed
while on the spot. These were based on direct study but executed at a planned second
session in the studio. As a result, in spite of the furiously swift movement in
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brushwork, there are signs of considerable refinement and restraint in the emotional
and touching lines of these pictures. Moreover, the creation of a complementary
relation between form and space, the application of the pictorial element parallel to the
subject, etc. are the characteristics why these pictures have the quality of directness in
their appeal as well as being complete and meaningful art works. Thus, both from the
aspects of subject and form, these drawings are able to overwhelm people from all
classes. (In nineteen forty-three at the initiative of the Communist Party they were first
exhibited in a room in the second storey of a building in College Street Market of
Kolkata and by being printed in the paper Janajuddha and they roused a very extensive
response.) Even though many other renowned artists of India painted pictures on this
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subject in those times, that no special dimension was added in their works as is seen in
fig. 8.4 Harvest, oil on Zainul’s work can be evidenced in the writings of the renowned critics, litterateurs and
canvas, 1934 politicians of that age. Critic O. C. Gangooly wrote even in 1944, ‘. . . Through this
extraordinary work he opened a new
chapter in the art of modern painting,’
[Trans.] and Sarojini Naidu remarked,
‘The appeal of these pictures is greater
. . . than even the most touching and
emotional description.’ [Trans.]
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Besides Zainul, artists like Chittaprasad,
Debabrata Mukhopadhaya, Somnath
Hore had at that time dedicated
themselves to painting pictures from the