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IPA Street Photography Asia Award 2013 Finalist 12: DAUDE HELAL FAHIM
Daude Helal Fahim
A Photo Blog.
Friday, July 26, 2013
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Portraits of S.M. Sultan
Portraits of S.M. Sultan
(Collection from Net )
SM Sultan (1923-1994) a renowned painter. His real
name was Sheikh Mohammad Sultan but he is more widely known as SM Sultan. He
was born on 10 August 1923 at Masimdia, a village in Narail district. His
father worked as a mason, and Sultan joined him after five years of schooling
at the Victoria Collegiate School
in Narail. Sultan also began to draw the buildings his father used to work on
and thus developed a liking for art. Sultan knew that an art education was only
possible in Calcutta ,
but family hardship stood in the way. It was then that the zamindar of the
area, Dhirendranath Roy offered his help. With monetary support from the
zamindar, Sultan went to Calcutta
in 1938.
But Sultan did not have the requirements for admission into
the government School of Art. With the help of another
patron, Shahid Suhrawardy, who was a member of the governing body of the
School, Sultan entered the Art
School . Suhrawardy also
offered him accommodation in his house, and the use of his own library. Sultan
however did not complete his education. After three years in the school, he
left and chose to work as a freelance artist.
Sultan had a strong Bohemian streak in his character and
something of a wanderer. He soon took to the road, travelling to different
places of India .
For a means of living, he drew the portraits of allied soldiers who had camped
at different places in India .
He held the first exhibition of his art work in Simla in 1946, but no work from
this period survives, not even photographs as Sultan was totally indifferent to
preservation of his work.
For a time, Sultan lived and worked in Kashmir
- mostly landscapes and portraits. Then, after the partition of the
subcontinent in 1947, he returned to Narail. Then again, in 1951, he left for Karachi . There he taught
as an art teacher at a school, and came in contact with artists like Abdur
Rahman Chughtai and Shaker Ali, with whom he developed lasting friendship. In
1950 Sultan had gone to USA
- exhibiting his work in New York , Washington , Chicago , and Boston , and later in London .
In 1953 he returned to Narail. There he built a school for children, and a
menagerie. He lived in a house full of cats and snakes. Except for occasional
visits to Dhaka (where he had his first
exhibition in 1976) he lived in the quiet isolation of his house.
On first looking at SM Sultan's paintings, one gets the
impression of vastness and strength. His canvas is large, like a spacious stage
where life's dramas are played out. The cast of the drama consists of
agricultural labourers, fishermen, simple householders, and toiling men and
women. The men pose an enigma, since their large muscular and sinewy bodies
contrast oddly with the emaciated physique of real life farmers and fishermen
wasted by hard labour and hunger. Yet, in painting after painting, mostly in
oil, but some in striking watercolours, Sultan painted the same human figures,
symbolically suggesting the possibility of a dream rather than reality. Sultan
believed in an arcadia where happiness and contentment would reign, yet was acutely
aware of the exploitation, violence and deprivation that were the daily fare of
the life of the villagers.
The tension between expectation and reality is a strong
undercurrent in his paintings, sometimes ironising his contrasted studies of
innocence and deceit. His strong bodied men fight with spears for a newly risen
sandbank, or kill a fellow villager in a clan war yet, in moments of domestic
repose, they revert to their roles of caring fathers or husbands. At times,
they turn into thinking figures, as in Reminiscence. His men are drawn in
the European Renaissance tradition while his women- supple-breasted and
graceful- belong to the old Indian tradition. Instead of delicate lines
however, Sultan uses strong curved lines, and flat body tones so that they do
not stand apart from the crowd of active males.
Sultan's watercolours
are bright and lively, but treat the same theme - nature and rural life. They
contrast sharply with the often drab and flat oils painted in deep colours.
Sultan tended to work heavily all over his canvas without living any empty
space. His drawings, however, are masterful in their economy and compactness.
The lines are powerful and full blown. In his later works though, the
composition is less tight and focused, perhaps a sign that Sultan was growing a
little impatient with the reality of his time.Thursday, October 25, 2012
Thursday, October 18, 2012
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