Page 331 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

328 ART AND CRAFTS

Vanga and Jharkhand, the landscape and the life of the people of that area. Surprisingly
Kolkata is absent from his pictures. Secondly, though his paintings and prints emerged
from directly visual perception, they are not merely lifeless descriptions. As for
instance in the oil paintings Sunlit Hut, Dumka-1, Dumka-2, and Dumka Shal Forest
(fig. 8.18) done in1946 the treatment is not smooth and finished in the Victorian
academic method, he applied the pigments in strokes like the impressionists; he did not
create sfumato by mixing paints. As a result, the colors appear vigorous and fresh; in
the light and shade of the picture one can actually feel the visual sensations produced
by vibration. In the portrait of his fellow student Dilip Dasgupta which he did in that
same year, the paint has been applied in impasto like the French, the colors have not
been blended into light and shade. In the wood engraving On the Way to the Fair, in
the drypoint View from Santiniketan, we can see the skilful handling of the medium, as
we also discover the time marked out in light and shade.
It is needless to say that his pictures create their own story. This story is the story of
life of the people where there is an endless mobility in the sensations of light, shade,
sunshine and motion. Movement has become one of the prime qualities of his pictures.
Here lies his distinction.
After partition all the Muslim professors of the Government Art School of Kolkata
fig. 8.18 Dumka Shal came to East Pakistan. Among them were Zainul Abedin, Safiuddin Ahmed, Anwarul
Forest, oil, 1946 Huq, Shafiqul Amin, Ali Ahsan and Habibur Rahman. Upto this point Safiuddin’s
sphere of acquaintance had been from Kolkata to
Dumka. He was not acquainted with the land of East
Pakistan or Bangladesh. Coming to Dhaka he was
actually faced by a completely new situation. In the
flowers of his Still Life painted in oil colors in 1947
we notice the same partiality for the impasto method
which can be noticed in his oil paintings even today.
In Threshing Paddy of ’52 the bodies of the three
thin men, who we see threshing paddy are quite
noticeably Bengali (fig. 8.19). While living in
Kolkata, the life of the people depicted in his
pictures is the life of the indigenous Santals. But
after coming to East Pakistan the look, posture and
the environment of the people in his pictures
changed. Empty Basket, Lemonade Stand (pl. 8.15)
painted in oil colors in 1954 are quite perceivably
pictures of East Bengal. The two paintings Fishing
and Carpenter (fig. 8.20) done between 1954-56
deserve special mention for two reasons. In these
two paintings in oil colors we notice that he has tried
to experiment with shapes more than in his