Page 383 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

380 ART AND CRAFTS

various geometric forms. These forms were created in such a way that one could be
seen through the other. A kind of cubic art was created here – known as the disguised
cubic style. These forms made of strong contour lines also remind one of mosaic art.
These paintings are his most important creations in the context of the evolution of
forms. On this the artist says, ‘One of the first works was the city of Florence. I
painted Chashi O Brishti (Peasant and Rain), Jele (Fisherman), Ma-Chhele (Mother-
Son), Paribar (Family), Street Singer etc. the way I imagined them – the academic
methods was not followed in any of these. It was a new phase in my ideas about
painting – combining semi-abstract simplification with geometry and rhythm.’ 26
[Trans.] (fig. 9.16)
The painter’s skill in geometric division of space and composition of lines and forms
is best exemplified in his mosaics and murals. He has artistically created harmony of
colors and forms in his Girl Playing with Bird (1956), Expansion of Sphere and
Structure (1987) and such works (fig. 9.17). The artist studied both forms of murals –
secco and bueno – in the School of Mosaic in Italy. He has demonstrated his
competence in these techniques particularly in the murals of Bangladesh Bank, Janata
Bank and Osmani Memorial.
In the beginning of the 1960s, he started relying solely on colors. The shapes of known
objects vanished from the canvas of his paintings. He expressed his emotions through
an eruption of colors. There is intensity and a manifestation of warmth in his emotions.
There are suggestions of red, yellow and blue over large areas. In the works, titled
Transformation, he searched for small geometric forms among the erupting colors.
Here and there, he has added motifs like the flower and the sun. Thus, he came back
fig. 9.18 Time and to the world of shapes and figures from the non-representational streams of colors. He
Beyond, oil and collage, even did figurative paintings in the 1980s following the representational style. On the
1974 topic of his wavering between the representational and abstract language of art, art
critic Osman Jamal can be quoted, ‘Aminul chooses the
colors and the sequence in which they are applied, but
retains little control over what happens next. He induces
colors to move and mix and generate forms and new
colors with the least possible interference on his part.’ 27
On the one hand, the organic image of forms and on the
other the independent existence of colors - in both
phases Aminul has used his artistic intelligence. This
artist of optimistic disposition depicted the experience of
the Liberation War of 1971 as a human debacle. In his
paintings on war, the assorted white bones of numerous
skeletons create metaphor of genocide. In the
foreground of the paintings are rows of human bones,
crossing which one finds a field of color – speaking of
life reborn. But in Wound, a painting he did in the
beginning of the 1970s, the lonely presence of a man