Page 413 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

410 ART AND CRAFTS

h. Qayyum Chowdhury
Syed Azizul Haq

After the pioneering artists like Zainul Abedin, Quamrul Hassan and Safiuddin Ahmed
– Qayyum Chowdhury’s name is the most popular among the first generation artists
of Bangladesh. He is famous for his cover designs – but his significance as a painter
is immeasurable. Although Kazi Abul Kasem and Zainul Abedin led the way for
applied art in Bangladesh, Quamrul Hassan helped this field to flourish and it was
Qayyum Chowdhury’s unswerving creative efforts that brought maturity to this art.
During the last fifty years, he has adorned this field with abundance and diversity. His
world of painting, on the other hand, resonates with the ebullient nature and life in
Bangladesh. The landscape of Bengal becomes lively in the composition of color and
form in the canvas of his painting. His deep compassion for the motherland gave him
an inimitable artistic consciousness. Nourished by progressive ideals, his secular
philosophy of life also resounds with the desire for the unfettered mind. A passion for
literature, music and film made his quests of life optimistic, variety seeking and an
abundant source of good taste.
Life Story
Qayyum Chowdhury was born on March 9, 1934 in an educated and aristocratic
family of Feni, Noakhali. As his father, being a cooperative-bank official, was
transferred from one place to another, Qayyum Chowdhury’s boyhood was spent in
various districts and mahakuma towns – in Chittagong, Comilla, Narail, Sandweep,
Noakhali, Feni, Faridpur and Mymensingh. Because of his close affinity with the
fascinatingly diverse nature of Bangladesh, a deep passion grew in his mind for
nature. Particularly, his life in Narail on the Chitra river played a significant role in
his study of nature. His interests, inherited from his father, in reading newspapers
fig. 9.41
Qayyum Chowdhury and books, and his love for music from childhood, contributed to developing his
aesthetic sense and cultured mentality – which gave birth to his love for art. During
his fourth and fifth grade in school, he had a keen attraction for the detective book
series of Kanchanjangha published by Deb Shahitya Kutir. He says, ‘The writing
was definitely good, but the cover and the illustrations of those books were excellent.
An artist named Pratulchandra Bandapadhyay used to draw those pictures. There
used to be a green pattern on the cover of those books, which was also impressive.’ 69
Apart from Pratulchandra, his contemporary artists Fani Gupta’s pictures and Samar
Dey’s illustrations inspired the development of Qayyum Chowdhury’s artistic being.
The magazines that were brought to their house (Bangashree, Prabasi,
Bharatbarsha, Basumati etc.) because of his father’s interest, used to contain
Abanindranath and Gaganendranath’s illustrations, which fuelled his passion for art.