“There is good work going on in Karachi, and there are artists who thirst for knowledge and work hard to resolve their own inner conflicts. We cannot be unaffected by forces that are going through the world because we too are motivated by these forces. The problem as it exists is to bring our art to our own unique cultural experience using the modern idiom. This is what I endeavoured to do for half a century.”

S. Ali Imam (2000)

A group exhibition held recently at the Indus Gallery, Karachi, marked the ninth anniversary of the demise of Syed Ali Imam who held a unique, unchallenged place in the art circles of the metropolis. Initially a member of the pioneer Lahore Group of artists in the 1950s, Imam was keen to widen his horizons and spent over a decade in London. On his return to Pakistan in 1967, he became a key figure as an artist, teacher and owner of the dynamic Indus Gallery. Until his final year in 2002, he was in demand throughout the country as a visiting lecturer of diverse art-related issues. Always candid and fearless, his lectures were extremely stimulating and audiences very reluctantly allowed the events to end.

Many of the visitors who attended the exhibition had been close to Imam; people from all walks of life, who in his lifetime were regular visitors to the gallery, several of whom became serious art collectors.

On display at the gallery were the paintings of 11 artists, all highly individual, and six of whom had been students of Imam. I include Wahab Jaffer among them as he started his art practice with Imam at the Indus Gallery, situated in PECHS, in the early ’70s.

Former students of the CIAC showing their work included Noorjehan Bilgrami, one of the founders of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVSAA) Karachi, and proprietor of the Koel Gallery, Karachi, Tabinda Chinoy, who contributed three colourful paintings, all in an optimistic mood and sparkling with touches of gold from the ‘Dreams and contentment’ series. Farid Omar’s striking contribution showed his intricate pen and ink work, and densely patterned pieces that went beyond simple description. One noted that the three disciplined linear artworks were followed by ‘an explosion of colour’ in total abstract style.

Jaffer had his signature work displayed—faces with birds and flowers—while Nahid Raza’s paintings took her gender-sourced theme to new heights. Here she depicted a woman’s home in a symbolic ‘square’ shape. There, the artist maintains, she plays the pivotal role in family life but eventually ends up alone. A large, brightly hued canvas depicted a cosmic vision of the purity of a women’s spirituality.

Shakeel Siddiqui put aside his renowned neo-realistic vocabulary and painted imaginary beauties against a heavily textured background. But despite this, visitors talked of his ‘lace cloth’ neo-realistic work. Other artists who participated were Babar Mughal whose paintings were beautifully rendered and quite unique; Henri Souffay whose intricate pen and ink drawings were much admired by his fellow artists; Akram Spaul and Scharjeel Sarfaraz. Sarfaraz is a painter who expresses his sensitive observations freely and with sensuously applied paint.

Qudsia Nisar, the first artist in the country to take Abstract Expressionism into the medium of watercolour, was represented by three artworks influenced by her years spent in Cholistan. Two of the paintings were brilliantly hued depicting the desert as it is seldom seen. The third, experimental painting was a collage of diffused fragmented images worked on rice paper.

Displayed in the adjacent study were paintings of Imam as well as mementoes of the past in assorted snaps and photographs. And one of them read as, “A communication revolution has taken place due to video, television and unforgettably, the radio. The maximum benefit can go to society and a real cultivation of people can be undertaken. I hope it will be done but I will not be there to see it.”