Page 399 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

396 ART AND CRAFTS

f. Murtaja Baseer
Dhali Al Mamoon

Murtaja Baseer is a modern painter who may be termed an artist of dual entity in
whom the representational and abstract mingle in one. Murtaja Baseer was born on
17 August 1932 in Dhaka. The renowned scholar and multi-linguist Dr. Muhammad
Shahidullah was his father and Marguba Khatun, his mother. He was the seventh
among nine brothers and sisters. He was quite a daredevil in his boyhood; being the
son of Dr. Muhammad Shahidullah he had a kind of pride and arrogance in his
behavior. His father also had to receive many a complaints because of this. In 1948
when he was a student of class X, he fled the house hurt and offended, and went as
far as Lucknow. 55
In 1949, after passing matriculation, Murtaja Baseer was admitted to the Government
Institute of Arts (now Institute of Fine Art, Dhaka University). In 1954, he passed in
the First Division in painting and drawing. At the beginning of his career as an artist,
his work mainly followed western realism and the academic style in pictorial
language, but the themes reflected his perceived experience and surrounding
everyday life. Hotel in Buriganga (oil on plywood, 1953) deserves special mention
(fig. 9.30) among his paintings done as a student. The painting was influenced by the
Impressionist style.
After completing the study of art in Dhaka he participated in the four-month Art
Appreciation Course at Ashutosh Museum of Calcutta University. There he got the
famous art connoisseur Ordhendra Coomar Gangooly as his teacher. He took his first
lessons in sculpture and linocut in this period. During his stay in Kolkata he was
influenced by the pictorial language and style of the artist Paritosh Sen, just back
from Paris. A short visit to Santiniketan also added a new dimension to his experience
of art in this stay.
fig. 9.29 Murtaja Baseer On his return from Kolkata, in 1955 Murtaja Baseer served for about a year as
drawing teacher at Nawabpur Government High School, Dhaka. In 1956, he formed
an artists’group called ‘Painters Unit’with classmates Qayyum Chowdhury and Syed
Jahangir. In February the same year, they held a joint painting exhibition at Dhaka
Press Club.
Murtaja Baseer went to Florence, Italy for higher studies in 1956 and took lessons in
painting and fresco. His direct introduction with the works of pre-Renaissance and
Renaissance artists happened at this point. The two-dimensional quality of the
pictorial plane and well thought out organization of geometric structure in forms by
the pre-Renaissance artists inspired him deeply.
While a student in Dhaka, Murtaja Baseer got directly involved in leftwing politics.
He was even incarcerated for some time because of his part in political activities. The