Karachi’s son Mansur Saleem was an astonishing artist. Highly gifted, intellectual and totally unique, he trod a singular path of his own invention and evolved a language of diverse symbols that offered an insight into his unique inner journey. Now that journey has ended sadly with the death of the artist in November 2015.

One remembers him as an art student and the excitement of Bashir Mirza (BM) when, in 1983, we were privileged to jury the artist’s thesis work from the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts (CIAC). BM’s face lit up when he saw among the work displayed, the audacious innovation of a large cellophane box filled with dried and leafless twigs.

After his graduation, Saleem set off for interior Sindh with a donkey carrying his materials. He set up installations and photographed them, placing objects in a natural setting and creating an ambience of time suspended. Saleem was even then into installations, happenings and conceptual art and his aesthetic direction set the pattern for times to come.

Mansur Saleem was a visionary artist who was way ahead of his time. He evolved a language of diverse symbols offering an insight into his distinctive private journey

He worked on a series titled “Vanishing Karachi” in which he captured detailed architectural works, with every brick delineated in a style that confronted reality with surrealism. There was a great demand for these paintings from Ali Imam’s Indus Gallery, and Imam Sahib was excited by the work, but in spite of this Saleem returned to a conceptual language that few understood. Those who understood his work considered him the most innovative, gifted artist of his time.

After his art study and completing a four-year diploma course at the CIAC, standing first class first from the Sindh Board of Technical Education, Saleem continued his intellectual pursuit. He went on to take a masters degree at the Karachi University, standing first in general history with specialisation in archaeology.

In 1987 he participated in a field archaeology course at the Pakistan archaeological department, and in 1988 participated in the Berkeley University archaeological excavation of the Indus Valley civilisation at Harappa.

Throughout his life, he continued to study and research Islamic art and history, studying Arabic in order to read the original text. In his art he developed a style of imagery that combined science with art. In exhibitions of his work in Karachi, the audience discovered boundaries separating reality, imagination and things remembered in an art language of diverse symbols of the artist’s inner journey.

As a teacher Saleem was inspirational; for several years he worked as a lecturer at the Karachi University, he also demonstrated and lectured on art at the CIAC, Karachi, but while still actively teaching and studying, he was diagnosed as suffering from a debilitating illness that curbed his activities. Medicines allowed him several hours in which he could paint, but he could no longer travel to set up his installations.

At that time he explained that he based some of his work on installations set up in the past. “I can no longer make the installations so I record in paint previous installations from memory or from photographs. Often other elements arise and I find changes automatically taking place.”

Saleem’s art was increasingly interesting all through his life. He spoke of receiving ‘flashes’, visions of imagery that entered his mind and left in seconds. These flashes entered his paintings and he spoke of them as “signs for future scientists to unravel. Perhaps they are a subconscious message of things past and things to come …”

As an artist, Mansur Saleem was always much ahead of his time creating in his work a movement of his own. Adventurous and not always easy to read, he was a superb painter and a great loss to the country’s art scene.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, December 13th, 2015