Tassaduq Sohail was known for his intensely dark, bizarre paintings that evoked and represented both fear and anxiety. The book The World of Tassaduq Sohail is a tribute to the artist by his friend and admirer Nasir Javed, founder of the Crescent Art Gallery. The two met in 2003 and immediately hit it off because of their mutual love for art and art history. They decided to publish a monograph on Sohail’s art in the artist’s lifetime and assigned it to Marjorie Husain. Unfortunately Sohail passed away before the project was realised. Javed has been working towards completing the monograph for the past four years. It was officially launched in London’s Grosvenor House last week. To the absolute pleasure of the art aficionados present at the event, seven paintings by the late artist were displayed.

According to Javed, the aim of the event was to support and promote Pakistani art internationally. Javed is a collector of Sohail’s work and convinced the Sindh government to dedicate a part of the National Gallery in Karachi to house a permanent collection of Sohail’s paintings.

Husain has been a proponent of the Pakistani art scene, and writing this book was her way to pay homage to an old friend. Her personal experiences serve as a lens into the earlier days of Sohail as an artist in London. Her accounts present snippets of his life that may have otherwise been lost. Husain knew Sohail way back when he was displaying his paintings on the railings of Hyde Park outside Lancaster Gate station. In the 1970s, he was introduced to Ali Imam and the Pakistani art scene by Laila Shehzada.

A monograph on the art of Tassaduq Sohail presents snippets of his life that may have otherwise been lost

Husain shared the fact that Sohail was a person who mostly deflected personal questions and rarely shared his private feelings. However, he had confided in her once that the painful experience of Partition had a deep impact on him as a 14-year-old boy. The dark side of Sohail’s visuals can be attributed to the gory experience of migration that stayed with him even as an adult, according to Husain.

The artist’s work evolved over time and his oeuvre boasts of melancholic works but also some humorous and erotic paintings. Sohail lived alone, save for an adopted tomcat named Sher Khan to keep him company.

When I sat down with Husain to get an insight about the artist and the book, she mentioned that Sohail would wake up at the crack of dawn every day, take food from his home and go out to feed animals — be it foxes in his London neighbourhood or birds, cats and dogs when he moved back to Karachi. Husain quoted the artist saying, “The world belongs to animals, not humans.”

Husain remembered fondly that Sohail had an active imagination and made up outrageous stories to the immense amusement of his friends. Quite a few of these are listed in the book.

The launch concluded with an auction of one of Sohail’s paintings titled ‘Labour with Love.’

The World of Tassaduq Sohail was launched at JW Marriot, Grosvenor House, London on July 15, 2019

Published in Dawn, EOS, July 28th, 2019