The first time I saw Sadequain’s work was at the Karachi Arts Council in the late 1970s. There was a string of huge quirky canvases, compelling, intense and overpowering. A clutch of exquisite calligraphic visuals vied for attention with pictures of birds nestling in a forest of human hair, Grecian line-drawings and the inevitable cacti. Some of the oils reeked of violence and were quite disturbing, like the one where a man has chopped off his own head and tucked it under his arm. Others were less dramatic.

A man who stood by my side said what I was looking at was an expression of revulsion against fascism by Pakistan’s most prodigious and prolific artist who was a legend in his life time.

Prodigious and prolific would be an apt description of the man who early in life must have received some kind of divine ecstatic illumination. My friend, the late Khalid Hasan in one of his delightful pieces, wrote, “When Sadequain died at the age of 57 from what can only be called too much living, it was not his death that was surprising but how he had managed to live so long, given the white hot intensity with which he lived and painted, wrote and loved. He burned his candle at both ends and had there been a third end, he would have burned it from that end too.”

In 2003, in a bid to preserve for posterity the works of the master, Mohatta Palace Museum in association with Unilever Pakistan, came up with their magnum opus The Holy Sinner. Stretched over 625 pages this is the definite account of the works of the talented poet of the canvas, who was once received by Indira Gandhi.

A few of the paintings were supplied by the artist Shehla Rahman who worked closely with Sadequain for two years in the mid 1980s and is uniquely qualified to distinguish a fake from a genuine Sadequain painting or sketch.

Sadequain’s works have popped up in exhibitions in different parts of the country. Some of the exhibits were brilliant political statements, others pillow-bitingly embarrassing, and others still, while they seemed to be enjoying a moment of distaff brilliance, nevertheless to some critics appeared a little wan and washed up. The latest display of his sketches appeared recently at Friendship House, the Russian cultural centre. The popular adroit director Sergey Kuznetsov and his dynamic cultural officer Shakeela Waheed worked jolly hard and put in long hours to make the exhibition a success.

The sketches were drawn at different periods in the artist’s life. I particularly liked the one of the woman in a sari in an exuberant style that emphasised movement, grace and sensuality, and the self portrait. The Russian cultural centre has been ably managed for the last seven years by its director Kuznetsov who, in addition to hosting a number of art exhibitions and plays translated into Urdu, also screened unforgettable classic Russian films.