Page 322 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

FIRST GENERATION ARTIST 319

It should be mentioned that women began to occupy a major part of Quamrul’s art
since the 50s. Although Quamrul lost his mother only when he was fifteen (1936), he
was always emotional and grieved by her memory. 117 On the other hand, he was
betrothed in 1959; and a relationship of love had developed between him and his wife
several years before their marriage. This relation was extremely emotional, exciting
and diverse. It should be marked that his observations on women are not fixed at one
point, but divided in several phases; and these divisions are closely related to his
personal joys and sorrows. For example, the first phase: the 50s: love and premarital
stage; second phase: the end of 50s to the beginning of the 70s: happy conjugal life;
third phase: the 70s and the 80s: the time of marital separation.
Some of the important works done in the first phase are Mother (drawing, 1952),
Waiting (drawing, 1952), Gossip (oils, 50s), Palli (tempera, 50s) Mother and Child
(Tempera, 50s), Two Neighbour Women in Conversation (oils, 50s), Three Women
(oils, 1955) (pl. 8.12) etc. In this phase females appear mainly as mothers and
homemakers, rather than as lovers. A kind of nostalgia is present in the rural environs
within which the females are located. The artist is full of memories of the fatherland
he left long ago; the female faces are also filled with similar emotions. All the three
women portrayed in a gossiping mood in the work titled Gossip were personally close
to the artist. He did not try to draw their exact portraits; rather the impression of three
familiar faces and their way of sitting are gleaned from memory. The painting shows
a gossiping scene that Quamrul saw in his childhood and his mother plays the role of
the central figure. One of the other two women is ‘Kalo Bou’, the vegetable seller
from the nearby area called Bagdipara; the other one is Munglikhana, a Santal
woman. 118 Painted after at least one and a half decades after his mother’s death, this
painting reveals Quamrul’s search for his mother’s beauty. Simultaneously, he
illustrated the common lazy gossip of Bengali rural women. The most significant work
from the first phase is Three Women. He created countless paintings based on the same
theme in later periods. Three bashful women wearing saris of three primary colors are
walking down path shaded by banana trees, on their way to fetch water. The brightness
in the painting created by a combination of colors of the deep blue, red and yellow
saris and the yellow-green of the banana and kochu (arum) leaves speak of the inner
joy of the three women. Cubist techniques are employed in the drawing of the faces,
figures and natural environment. There is an effort to create volume in drawing the
figures. But present in the single color of the saris devoid of any design is the
simplicity and two-dimensionality of folk art. This painting is important as a primary
representative of the successful synthesis he achieved between lines and forms of folk
art and the Cubist style in his later period.
A new dimension entered Quamrul Hassan’s thoughts concerning women as a result
of some personal experiences such as love, marriage, a happy conjugal life and birth
of his daughter (1961) and it was reflected in his works done in the second phase.
Some of the notable works from this period are After Bath (Lithograph, 1958), Jalkeli