KARACHI: If you are one who looks for social or political messages in fine art then Hajra Mansur’s paintings will not interest you but if you are into aesthetics and the prime attraction for you is beauty then her works, particularly the ones on display currently at the Art Scene Gallery, will hold you in thrall. She is back in the kind of paintings that she did in the sixties and in subsequent decades. Sometime ago, however, she strayed into a territory which was not her own, and you could detect traces of abstract art in her work.

Better not broach the subject with her because she is bound to cross-question you and ask you to define abstract art. One admirer made this mistake. He tried to cover it up by saying that there is no distortion in your work. She shot back, “Look at the women I paint. The hands, for example, are never as straight as I paint them. Look at the nose and how it merges into the forehead. It’s one straight line. The eyes are over-sized. Aren’t they?” The poor art enthusiast had no answer to that and no choice but to beat a hasty retreat.

But no one at the exhibition disagreed with the fact that all 33 of her compositions (two are on canvas and the remaining on paper, using the wash technique) show tall, slim, women with long artistic fingers in flowing dresses.

There is rhythm and flow in her works, with ornamentation thrown in for good measure. The colours are warm and soothing. There is nothing garish about them. You see traces of Chughtai, as indeed the influence of Mughal, Kangra and Persian miniatures in her work. In one of the paintings on display is a composition within a composition. There is the kind of horse and a rider that you see in Mughal paintings, but there are some modern elements in it too.

If one has to describe the works in a nutshell, one would like to call them visually delightful.—Asif Noorani