Page 309 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

306 ART AND CRAFTS

perspective consonant with the age among the teachers and students, constructing an
attractive building for the Art Institute, and to make the society and the state develop
an appreciation for art. In this context he has spoken like a true guardian, ‘I get more
pleasure than the practice of my own art on seeing art well-established . . . That is the
reason why it is desirable that the practice of art be made universal.’ [Trans.]
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In fact, he extended the scope of the sense of social responsibility which established him
in the best chapter of his life by composing the Famine series in 1943 towards an even
more glorious aim to the last day of his life. It is the reflection of just this vast extension
of consciousness that we see in Nabanna painted in 1969 and Manpura-70 painted in
1970, the two paintings similar to murals of huge dimensions (the length of these two
are 65 feet and 30 feet respectively). Previously in the case of his painting entitled The
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Struggle of 1958 we saw him give importance to the mood of the subject parallel to the
space of the painting along the length of the ground (the subject of the painting is in
movement and is horizontally dynamic) (pl. 8.6). However, many consider that the
subject, size and form of this painting was determined by the socio-political background
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of the then Pakistan in the clutches of autocratic military rule. He painted Nabanna in
1969, when the long struggle of the Bengali people for the establishment of their own
rights due to being secular in character gained the participation of all, irrespective of
caste-creed-religion and had taken the form of a mass uprising. It is mainly in this
perspective that including the selection of the subject matter of Nabanna, he changed
the entire manner of the plan for the painting. Generally the majority of his other works
have been executed with the focus on some particular scene or event in the lives of the
laboring people of rural Bengal. However, Nabanna presents ‘a complete depiction of
the happiness-sorrow-dream-pain of the peasant’s life . . .’ ‘. . . How the glorious,
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happy life of the past was gradually lost due to colonial exploitation and reached the
extreme limit of poverty, how the farmers of the village lost everything to become
paupers, this is that touching history’ [trans.] which he described in strokes of wax, ink
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and water color on paper. It is especially to be noted that in terms of the subject
fig. 8.7 Manpura-70
Nabanna represents the Bengali’s secular tradition encompassing everyone, likewise the
materials and arrangement of this
painting is also close to the patachitra
scrolls of the aare-latai (horizontally
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rolled) type, traditional to Bengal. He
transformed this painting composed in
the period of the great unity of the
whole Bengali nation into a document
of unity by making the viewers of all
professions and classes who came
during the exhibition of the painting
sign their names on the blank spaces of
the painting. Thus, through painting
Nabanna ‘he added a new chapter in the