Murtaja Baseer Artist Supreme
Renowned artist Murtaja Baseer's drawings, collages and oil paintings (spanning 1954-2014) are on display at Galleri Kaya. The exhibition began on September 12 and runs till September 25.
Murtaja has a place of his own among Bangladeshi artists. His careful portraiture, with detailed lines and balanced colours expresses his comments on society. His depiction of Bangladeshi women, in particular, reflects their individuality, strong personality and angst. These works are done in the form of collage, drawing and in pastel.
Being a socially aware individual, he indulged in politics as a student, fired by the fervour of the Freedom Movement. He depicts women of different levels of society from villages as well as urban areas. The canvas he uses has different sizes. These have been piling up for the last 20 years.
He took lessons in the Asutosh Museum, Calcutta (now Kolkata), around 1954. During 1992 and 1993, he depicted the vulgarity of society in his portraits of society women, who took pride in being fashion plates. During 1993 his depiction of bourgeois women revealed them as entities who took pride in dyeing their hair and wearing sleeveless blouses. He was exploring the technicalities of colour and form. While in Italy, he was influenced by Botticelli, Modigliani, and Picasso.
Around this time, he did a collage of “No More War”. He depicted the hollow stage, the ruin and pillage of the Iraq War which affected so many families, just as the Gaza conflict has worst affected homeless orphans and women in the Palestine region. The collage “Statue of Liberty” once again depicted the fleeing women and children leaving behind their precious assets.
Many of Baseer's drawing are included in the exhibition. They include pen and ink drawings of 1960, nudes and semi-nudes. In this period, the artist was stressed and these works are a record of his frustration.
Baseer's “Women No. 3”, 1991, on board depicts a woman doing her hair. Behind her are blooming cacti, clumps of bushes green and white abstractions. She is shown in colours of deep purple ad light, as if sitting on a hillock with a spray of cacti on her breasts. “Liberty Now” features a woman in shades of emerald and jade, with a yellow and black scarf around her neck and bosom. The background is a mixture of black, deep green and navy blue. The painting has a 3D effect as if carved from stones.
“The Artist & Transmitted Energy” and “What Makes A Creative Thinker” are once more abstract, and gives 3D effects. In “Creative Thinker” one gets the effect of several people sitting on benches in a church, where overhead are arcs of section of the building. This is in dark umber and black, touched vermillion.
Black and gold take up the rest of the space. The painting is mind-whirling.
“Review”, oil pastel on canvas, has a lady with flowing tresses who wears a silk sari in blue with gold and orange border and anchal. The backdrop is in streaks of white and turquoise. “Woman No2” 1990 (collage on canvas) has a beige coloured woman with a stark bikini on. This is more eye-catching than a nude, especially in our conservative world. “Review No e, 2014(oil pastel on canvas), in contrast has a shy village woman with the edge of her sari's anchal between her teeth, The sari is green and blue while her lips are a pale shade of pink and the backdrop is orange.
“Dream” 1991, (collage on board), has a young woman with a milk and honey complexion, dreaming of white steeds, frisking among rocks, flower bushes and a stream of clear water, as if spouting from a fountain. His “Birth of Venus Homage to Botticelli”1990 (collage on board) has Venus, as if made from a blue still, rigged up for the demands of the twenty-first century with pirouetting ballerinas in pink, purple and white leotards -- as if in a ballet practice, among a flower and gold bubble-laden river bank.
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