The relative freedom and ease with which women in Pakistan opt for and pursue successful careers in art today owes much to the convictions and perseverance of women artists of the early post-independence years. Other than the handful who shone as trailblazers, it was the not so visible majority of women art educators in premier institutions of the country who widened the art discipline and gave it the berth it now enjoys as a forceful medium of aesthetic expression.
Battling traditionalist and patriarchal attitudes, at home and in the workplace, they—through sheer tenacity, personal acumen and hard work—transformed art from a non-threatening occupation or peripheral activity for women, as it was once considered, into a comprehensive, career-oriented discipline it now is.
Young female artists willing to challenge social norms became visible as early as in the 1940’s.The legendary Amrita Shergill, who was singled out as a quintessential modern artist, as much for her radical art as for her bohemian personality, was the sub-continent’s first professional woman artist. A child of Indo-Hungarian parentage, she was trained in Paris but chose to return to paint “something vital, connected with the soil.” A recurring theme throughout Shergill’s oeuvre was the representation of women in seclusion, or moments of private thought. In 1941, while preparing for a solo in her studio, she became seriously ill and passed away at the young age of 28. Considered an icon on both sides of the border, her work is highly treasured and graces museum collections.
Another dedicated artist of European origin, one who essentially spearheaded the concept of art as an occupation for women in Pakistan, was the dynamic Anna Molka Ahmed. While studying at the Royal College of Art in London, she met and married artist Sheikh Ahmed and relocated to Lahore in 1940, the very year the fine arts department of Punjab University was established. Young Ahmed was the first appointee. In hindsight this appears ordained, for in a career spanning 55 years she was the most fervent crusader of art education. As head and later Prof Emeritus, she developed and expanded the department with new disciplines and more students. For the scores who were touched by her wand, many distinguished themselves as exemplary art educators and successful artists—Anwar Afzal, Abbasi Akhtar Abidi, Naseem Hafiz Qazi, Jalees Nagi and Jamila Zaidi being the few of the early ones. A prolific expressionist painter, she brought the same vigour to her personal oeuvre, passionately chronicling in paint the social and political turmoil of Partition, floods, religious events, festivals and a series of mystical visions of heaven and hell.
On a different tangent, but no less extraordinary, Zubaida Agha—Pakistan’s first female abstractionist—also emerged in the turbulent and fertile 1940s. A graduate of Kinnaird College Lahore, she was first introduced to Futurism by her private tutor Mario Perlirgeiri, an Italian prisoner of war and a pupil of Picasso, who was sent during the war to decorate the Lahore Gymkhana. Her first solo in 1949 at Karachi YMCA raised a storm of protest for she had broken the rules and dispensed with tradition. It was such iconoclastic divergences that lead to new directions for future female artists. Reclusive and reticent, yet fiercely determined, Agha’s contribution goes beyond just the production of a compelling and enigmatic personal oeuvre to that of an avid art promoter.
In 1960, when art was still a nascent genre, she set up Pakistan’s first private art gallery for contemporary art, in Rawalpindi/Islamabad, which she ran successfully for 16 years. It showcased important annual exhibitions and works of young artists from both wings of Pakistan alongside prevailing greats like Chughtai, Sadequain and Shakir Ali, and was also an important meeting place for local and visiting artists in the newly established capital of Islamabad.
Unlike Lahore, women artists in Karachi attracted little attention until the ’60s. A young Laila Shahzada turned from children’s dress designer to artist when she befriended the artists’ and writers’ fraternity that frequented A.S. Nagi’s studio. Winning acclaim for her ‘Driftwood’ series, inspired by the mysterious patterns found on driftwood scattered on Karachi’s shoreline, she was also among the first to explore ethnic Mohenjodaro and Gandhara motifs as painterly subjects.
As art education became widespread, the sporadic presence of women painters in the early decades gave way to a collective manifestation of practising women artists. A climate conducive to female aesthetic expression began to evolve in Karachi after the establishment of Central Institute of Arts and Crafts, also known as CIAC by Ali Imam, and Karachi School of Art by Rabia and Hajra Zuberi in the mid-1960s. Prominent Karachi artists Nahid Raza, Meher Afroz, Riffat Alvi, Lubna Agha and Noorjehan Bilgrami merged as torchbearers of modernism in the ’70s and ’80s, while significant abstractionists like Salima Hashmi, Qudsia Nisar and Mussarat Mirza were products of art institutions in Lahore.
Thick-crusted application of paint, a personal vocabulary of symbols and a deep focus on the plight of women personifies Raza’s expression. Fluctuating between semi-figurative and iconic imagery, Afroz, sharing dark journeys of the spirit, paints a vulnerable inner self in a coarse abrasive mannerism. Questioning the quality of existence and painting the search within, Alvi is the only artist in our milieu using earth pigments as painterly media. Moving through a gamut of moods from abstraction to figuration, Agha’s art also examines the human condition and the inner self.
An artist and craft activist, Bilgrami’s aesthetic journey is inspired by the Zen ethos. Commenting on the political and social uncertainties confronting the people of Pakistan, Hashmi opts for an abstract mix of figuration and organic impressions in her art. Shrouded in a mystical haze, Mirza’s understated minimal imagery is a reflection of her spiritual passage towards the divine. Nisar, who is credited with pioneering abstract watercolours, captures inner rhythms through a lively medley of strokes in her oeuvre.
These vital history makers continue to enrich the art climate to this day, not just through their work but as responsible educators, mentors and activists as well. The directions their lives have taken and the choices they have made characterise the difficulties faced by women committed to creative experience.