August 2, 2003

Salwat Alion Rafe-uz-Zaman’s first posthumous exhibition that opened in Karachi

A debut and a retrospective show, Silent Voices, at the V.M. Gallery is quite a surprise package. It introduces an artist who was basically schooled for an academic career but whose heart was essentially in art. Rafe-uz-Zaman Siddiqi, son of Dr Salimuzzaman Siddiqi, was intensely devoted to the arts and he painted consistently, even compulsively throughout his life.

An intellectual and an aesthete, he has been variously described, by those close to him, as a philosopher and a scholar with a keen ear for western and Indian classical music. In fine arts he pursued the painterly practice for the sheer joy and challenge of the creative experience. Unfortunately, we know next to nothing of Rafe, the painter, as he was a “very private person” by nature and the thought of exhibiting his work never crossed his mind.

Rafe-uz-Zaman was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1924. At that point in time both his parents were studying at the University of Frankfurt and he spent the first six years of his life with his German grandparents. His wife remarks that his childhood upbringing “had a great impact on almost every aspect of his later life, particularly his passion for art and music.”

As early as 1946, while he was still preparing for his masters in philosophy at the Delhi University, his tutor Prof. S.K. Sen declared that “Rafe-uz-Zaman has an eye and hand for the art of painting... and is more than a dillentante.” A professional career in academics at the World University Services, and International Universities Association, placed Rafe in Geneva and elsewhere in Europe for the next twenty years of his life.

This prolonged exposure to the cultural climate of Europe had a profound influence on his aesthetic expression. Rafe retired from his professional engagements in 1994 and his wife recalls that thence onwards “he worked with a ferocious speed to produce some of his best works until his death in January 2000.”

The V.M. exhibition is not a full retrospective but the cream off the milk. Selectively curated by Riffat Alvi, the show spans the decade of the 90’s, possibly the most creative ten years of his life, when he painted uninterruptedly, to his heart’s content.

Spontaneous personal expression in paintings that are abstract and non-representational is generally begun with very little pre-meditation. The works develop like an initiative as the artist proceeds. The goal of the abstract expressionist is not to replicate the external appearance of objects, but to create through retrospection and by bringing out the inner self. This also conforms to the Freudian and Jungian view that artists should turn inwards for inspiration.

Rafe-uz-Zaman’s paintings on display at V.M. Gallery hit the eye as swirling bursts of energy. Their childlike spontaneity is, in a manner of speaking, equivalent to laying bare the unconscious. They are sheer feelings, visualized on paper, on canvas, as and how he felt them. He expresses through strong calligraphic contouring, not of the Islamic mannerism but that pertaining to the East Asian philosophy, as appropriated by the abstract expressionists like Mark Tobey, Franz Kline, David Smith, etc.

On a technical level, the absolute sureness and rapidity of his method resembles Zen artists’ practice of ink painting in which correction is impossible. Indeed the calligraphic impulse is a recurring feature of Rafe’s expression as he aligns the motion of mark making with inner forces. These works of art can also be viewed as instinctive acts rather than just configurations.

The aim here is not towards producing a commonly readable ideograph or writing but towards an ultimate structure of feeling. Bold angular and curvilinear rhythms are formalized into singular signature marks. Undecipherable, these artworks emerge as coded metaphors of energy which viewers can best admire for the vast array of emotions they may symbolize — from tumult and turmoil to joy and elation.

Many strands of Rafe’s existence are braided into his paintings, from his academic, philosophical acumen to the theory of Jungian archetypes, from Zen calligraphic nuances to the strains of classical music and then the interactive stimuli of his own bi-cultural sensibility, are also very much part of the whole.

Flat and two dimensional, these artwork are rendered on paper and canvas in a variety of media. His earlier works were done in oils, crayons, watercolours and lead pencils. From 1960 onwards, he added pastels and Chinese ink to his mediums. Rafe has made creative use of the palette knife and dry brush to invoke texture and often indulges in a merry mix of oil crayons, markers and pastels to achieve desired affects in his work. His colour palette is intense but without recourse to every bright or primary colours as he has an instinctive feel for tonal gradations.

Mrs Rafe-uz-Zaman, as spokesperson for the current show, revealed that she was planning a sequential launch of Rafe’s entire body of work in the near future. A comprehensive catalogue is also under consideration which will serve the twin purpose of documentation of the art works as well as a source of reference to interested students of art — this will also help in locating Rafe, the painter, in a much clearer and larger perspective.