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IT is unsurprising that art has little place in a society as racked by violence and as warped by greed as Pakistan is today.
Artists, too, are marginal figures unless they are good at self-promotion. And Shahid Sajjad was the very antithesis of a pushy person blowing his own trumpet: modest to the point of becoming a recluse in his last few years, he let his work speak for itself.
And what work! Over years of inspired carving and working in bronze, Shahid Sajjad has left behind a large number of stunning sculptures that made him Pakistan’s foremost sculptor. True, he did not have much competition here as sculpture is not only very hard work, but is also regarded with suspicion in our religiously charged milieu.
Shahid Sajjad’s work would have stood out for its originality anywhere in the world.
But anywhere in the world, Shahid’s work would have stood out for its originality, its workmanship and its sheer integrity. He was a close friend for 50 years, and I am writing about him today because I was far away when he left us forever a few days ago.
I suppose I have entered a phase in life when most of the news from old friends is about illness, so I was not entirely surprised when I received a text message from Zohra Yusuf informing me that Shahid had died that morning.
He was suffering from throat cancer, and last year, doctors had to perform an operation that deprived him of speech.
For a highly articulate man, this was a deprivation beyond description. On my frequent visits, I used to be deeply pained to see his frustration at not being able to express the ideas that bubbled up in his active mind. He would scribble on a pad and resort to gestures to express himself, but given the complexity of the thoughts he wanted to put across, these means of communication were highly unsatisfactory.
So when I learned of his death, I grieved for my old friend, but was glad he had found relief from the suffering caused by his cancer.
Salmana, Shahid’s devoted and hugely supportive wife of many years, suspected that the cancer had been caused by years of inhaling fumes from the chemicals he used to finish his bronze sculptures.
Actually, Shahid’s obsession with bronze goes back many years. After a long stint living with the Chakma tribe in the hill tracks near Chittagong in the ’60s, Shahid returned with a number of large wooden figures he had made there.
Beautifully carved, these statues embodied patient suffering, and have been standing in his flat ever since, mute witnesses to their creator’s own perseverance in the face of adversity.
At some point after that, he decided he wanted to work in bronze.
His first few experiments were disastrous: bronze is a tricky material at the best of times, and is unsparing in the hands of the unskilled. So he travelled to Japan and then to England to learn the technique at the feet of masters. The influence of his Japanese guru stayed with him the rest of his life.
A restless soul, Shahid once famously got on his small motorcycle and travelled across Europe, visiting galleries and making friends in unlikely places. He never had much money, but his needs were limited.
In the West, sculptors working in bronze hand over their plaster casts to specialist foundries where they are turned into moulds and then cast in metal. Artists (and their clients) can even specify the kind of patina, or finish, they want. Shahid did not have this luxury in Karachi, and so had to make his own kiln in his workshop.
Pouring molten metal into moulds is hard, exacting work: make a mistake and the mould will burst. But Shahid persevered until he finally gained mastery over this difficult technique. Although bronze has been around since the time of ancient Greece, it remains as tricky a material to work in as it was thousands of years ago.
I once asked Shahid why he did not get a couple of art students to help him as this would give them an opportunity to learn, and relieve him of some of the hard physical work. He replied that some students had come, but soon left because they couldn’t take the heat and the labour involved.
From time to time, Shahid would return to working in wood. A few years ago, he produced a number of huge human figures that he was very pleased with. One of the enduring disappointments in a life littered with artistic setbacks was the refusal of Karachi’s Mohatta Palace management to allow him to display these magnificent statues in its garden.
In Lahore, the Punjab government set up the Shakir Ali museum to house a permanent collection of the venerated artist’s work. Why can’t the Sindh government do the same in Karachi? Given Bilawal Zardari-Bhutto’s attachment to culture, this should not be impossible.
Published in Dawn, August 2nd, 2014
