Page 372 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

SECOND GENERATION ARTISTS 369

Kibria has worked in the oil color and printmaking media. In printmaking he has
mainly worked in lithograph and etching. He had learned woodcut in Japan and had
also worked there in watercolor. Kibria is an adept craftsman in using the
characteristics of a medium to depict his own expressions. Kibria has used the layers
of colors or scraped surface of oil painting to depict psycho-introspective expressions.
On the other hand, the texture of stone, possibility of dimensions, subtle linear
drawing in lithograph have given Kibria the opportunity of creating sensual, lyrical
visual art. Kibria has done all these with enviable craftsmanship. According to Kibria
himself, he has tried to understand each medium and to read their languages. He
believes it to be a major artistic achievement to be able to create a harmony between
one’s own artistic aspirations and the possibilities of a medium. 7
Kibria passed his childhood at the town of Shiuri in Birbhum district. Kibria
remembers it as a sleepy town built on red soil with a lot of open space. It was very
close to Santiniketan which gave it a sophisticated, urban taste. Kibria remembers that
he saw the works of major artists from Santiniketan in the fair that was held in Shiuri.
He wanted to be admitted to Kala Bhavana of Santiniketan after his high school
graduation. Somehow the date of admission was over for that year and he could not
get admitted there but had to come to Calcutta Art School. Altogether ninety-one
students were admitted in the Art School that year. The Second World War had only
just ended. Such a big number of students in the Art School during such difficult times
remind us of the prosperity of the school. Kibria himself is of the opinion that the
environment of the Art School and the quality of the teachers were very rich for formal
training on art. Somnath Hore was his classmate. He remembers the environment of
secular art practice at the Art School. 8
When Kibria came out of Art School at the fag end of the forties of the last century, his
artistic aspiration was throbbing to go beyond the academic style. He had learned the
skills of using techniques from the teachers of the Art School. Teacher like Basanta
Ganguly had made him conscious about the centrifugal structure of a picture and taught
him how to stretch the field of vision of viewers by the sensitive use of lines. The principal
of the Art School, Ramendranath Chakravorty, was a man of knowledge about the
international trends of art. The influence of these teachers and perhaps, the introspective, fig. 9.8 Water Sport, oil,
solitude seeking, deeply sensitive mind of Kibria was preparing the future artist in him. 1953
He was getting prepared to seek the third dimension within the two-dimensional pictorial
plane going beyond the representative
depiction of life and matter in art. Recalling
the days just after the Art School, Kibria says
that he was already then familiar with
Impressionism and Expressionism of the west
and also he was drawn to miniature paintings
and was especially partial towards Pahari
miniature painting. 9
At the beginning of the fifties Kibria came to
Dhaka as a citizen of a newly born state. He