KARACHI: It’s hard to say what feats Asim Butt would have achieved in the world of art had he lived longer and not died at the young age of 32. The fact is he was an exceedingly talented artist whose paintings and sculptures brimmed with untapped energy and undiscovered youthful verve. Butt’s association with Stuckism meant he was not one for conceptual art, as it were. The figures that we see in his paintings are real, taken from everyday life trapped or put in situations that are readily identifiable. It is for this reason that a decent number of art lovers flocked to the Canvas Art Gallery where Butt’s monograph titled ‘Rebel Angel’ was launched on Saturday evening.

Apart from the launch of the monograph, his last works were also auctioned. The auction had some very fine Asim Butt artworks on view, and the interesting thing is that despite the different time periods they belong to, not to mention the different media employed for their creation, the intensity and the force with which the artworks were made was the same. There was a striking oil-on-canvas painting of a woman, perhaps from the lower echelon of society, with her face resting on her left hand (or perhaps the hand is covering her face to hide something), looking quite distraught. It’s not the face that tells her tale, but the artist’s ability to draw the contours of her visage and fill her eyes with unspoken melancholia that does the trick. And when he draws a self-portrait on paper with charcoal, the situation and character change, but the intensity remains.

Art critic Marjorie Husain shed light on the life and work of Asim Butt on the occasion as well.