Page 61 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

58 ART AND CRAFTS

From the very beginning, Swapan Choudhury has shown the tendency to experiment,
travelling from one style to another almost simultaneously. The traditional doll-like
male and female figures with long necks in the paintings from his initial stage are to
a certain extent expressive of ideas of Surrealism. Besides, Swapan Choudhury is also
very much interested in creating textures on the pictorial surface, wishing to create an
ambience of a special feeling on the canvas by pasting various objects, especially
crumpled clothes, to the canvas. With texture as the key element, some of his paintings
during this period are completely abstract. His tendency to create relief on the picture
plane remained even in later stages. His paintings during the eighties are generally
abstract in form and texture has remained as the key element rather than shapes or
composition of color. Nevertheless, a tendency to create patterns by dividing the
pictorial surface through vertical and horizontal shapes can be observed in a few
paintings. At present, Swapan Choudhury has settled in the Abstract Expressionistic
style in watercolor and mixed medium on paper (pl. 1.25).
In terms of the variety in the use of medium, distinctiveness, and novelty in
representations, Kalidas Karmakar is an outstanding artist of the seventies. Kalidas’
artworks cannot be defined by any particular attribute. In painting, as far as use of
medium is concerned, he has used oil painting, gouache to various other types of
mixed media. He has attached metal pieces, wood, sand, plaster and many other types
of loose objects to the pictorial surface, sometimes even adding a complete part of a
car. With the wash technique of watercolor, he has added mixed medium, pen and ink
with tempera. In printmaking, he has created prints through etching, aquatint and a
variety of other mixed media. Some unifying qualities may be discovered among his
various types of artworks. Firstly, an oriental characteristic can be observed in his
paintings and prints, be they abstract or representational. The inspiration for his
representational paintings is generally religion, Purana, folk belief, religious symbols
etc. He has accepted the method of installing the deities of Hindu belief in the
structural composition of his paintings. He uses the element of fantasy that is present
in Hindu belief and mythology to create his own surreal world. Secondly, when he
proceeded towards abstraction he collected the abstract elements and symbols from
his own tradition, mainly from Tantric patterns and symbols. Thirdly, he uses a
flowing ornamental line in painting and printmaking which is obtained from the
indigenous tradition. A densely composed design of color, line, form and texture is a
key trait of his paintings and prints, a trait that is traceable in all his artworks despite
the use of various media and materials (fig. 1.33).
The few noteworthy painters who have appeared with original qualities in the latter
half of the seventies are Mahmudul Haque (1945- ), Shahabuddin Ahmed (1950- ),
KMA Quayyum (1950- ) and Farida Zaman (1953- ).
After graduating in painting at the very end of the sixties, Mahmudul Haque entered
his own world through extended experimentation and practice. The advanced training
in printmaking due to the scholarship of the Japanese government helped him to be