Sadequain

TRIBUTE TO SADEQUAIN by Wasif.flv

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• published: 23 Jan 2010
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Syed Sadequain Ahmed Naqvi (Urdu: سید صادقین احمد نقوی), Tamgha-e-Imtiaz, Pride of Performance, Sitara-e-Imtiaz, also often referred to as Sadequain Naqqash, was a world-renowned Pakistani artist, best known for his skills as a calligrapher and a painter. He is considered as one of the finest painters and calligraphers Pakistan has ever produced. Before Sadeqain, few painters had experimented with the medium in Pakistan. Sadequain is commended for bringing calligraphy into a mainstream art form, as most of the known Pakistani artists have followed Sadequain and calligraphic art now dominates the art scene. Sadequain also painted classical literature from the poetic verses of Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz. He belonged to the school of thought which enriched realism with lyricism. Sadequain Illustrated French Nobel Prize winning writer Albert Camus, Ghalib, Iqbal, and Faiz He did thousands of drawings and gave them away to his admirers. He wrote and published hundreds of quartets Sadequain was the most prolific painter of the post partition Pakistan. He was constantly at work and he worked on large scale. He repeatedly stated that he was not interested in decorating drawing rooms of rich and powerful. He worked on large murals for public buildings symbolic of the collective labor of humanity and his work was mostly donated to the public. Sadequain in his own words was primarily a painter of figures with allegorical significance. In an interview he said, People ask why I don't paint flowers, butterflies and landscapes? I tell them that I seek the truth and I am after reality. I am not inspired by someone posing against the backdrop of roses in a vase or pink curtains. What inspires me is a person who has gone hungry for hours and is struggling for survival. The expression that lights his face at the end of the day when he has finally found some scraps, that is what touches me. I am a painter of the expression of reality. Self proclaimed Faqir, Sadequain was outside societys worldly greed or hypocrisy and called himself speaker of truth. Best known for his calligraphies, Sadequain painted abstracts, drawings, and sketches on thousands of canvases, volumes of paper, and multitudes of other conventional and unconventional materials. In his lifetime two art galleries were established by the official authorities, one in Islamabad called Gallery Sadequain, which was located in Block F and the second one in the Frere Hall Karachi, also called Gallery Sadequain. After he died, the Islamabad gallery was disassembled and some two hundred paintings were unaccounted for and the Frere Hall gallery is closed for all practical purposes because of the security reasons. Forty calligraphic panels on marbel slabs measuring 6 ft (1.8 m) x 5 ft each have disappeared. At the time of his death at OMI Clinic in Karachi, his attendant was present when sadequain took his last breath at 2:00 AM. The attendant did not inform the doctors of Sadequain's death and instead took off for Frere Hall where Sadequain had been working on the ceiling. The attendant loaded as many paintings as he could in a Susuki van, took them to a safe house and then returned to the hospital to inform the doctors. The stolen paintings are resurfacing for sale at regular frequency.