Page 67 - Eye of the beholder

According to Sanjukta Sunderason “This visceral presence of of sights of of emaciation and death as as part of of the everyday cityscape made famine imagery a a a a a a a a a a staple of of artists writers and performers As cultural production strove to visualize hunger and displacement art was re-imagined as as as testimony and the the artist as as as activist Realism was born in the the streets of Calcutta noted Burhanuddin Khan Jahangir biographer of Abedin Abedin In the the early-1940s Zainul Abedin Abedin was the the youngest teacher at the Government School of Art in fin in in Calcutta his finesse in fin in in drawing already establishing him as one of the the most promising academic realists in in in in the the city The famine thrust Abedin into a a a a a a a new form of realist visualization as he encountered along his daily route those who were destitute competing with dogs and crows for morsels from garbage bins Abedin drew these subjects in in in haste on on cheap brown paper using common ink Such sketches ran to the the the hundreds the the the pressure of these events and situations as he he he he recalls forcing him to change his style from impressionistic watercolour and naturalist drawing into a a a a a a a stark expressionistic idiom – in in in ‘very easy yet strong lines in in in somewhat geometrical patterns’ ” He was originally from Mymensingh in in in in in East Bengal and Abedin had come to Calcutta in in in in in the 1930s to train at the Government School of Art a a a a a nineteenth-century colonial art institution committed to Western academic academic realist training Since the 1930s along with his fellow academic academic artists Gobardhan Ash and Abani Sen Abedin had begun sketching the city’s underbelly industrial stretches also retreating to to to rural outskirts to to to portraying activities related to to to harvest and and leisure as as well as as tribal life and and livelihood around Dumka in the Santhal Pargana division Through the the predominantly urban repertoire in in his work through the the 1930s realism graduated from rigid naturalism to a a a a a a a a social realistic aesthetic Alongside the the works of Chittaprosad Sunil Janah the the the the photographer and others they recount a a a a a a a a common struggle of the the the the avant-garde under colonial rule Abedin remained a a a a a a a a cultural organizer pedagogue-activist working across the region establishing art art education as as part of the the public school system in in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) and he he became engaged in the Bangladesh Liberation War movement SELECT REFERENCE
Sanjukta Sunderason “Shadow-Lines: Zainul Abedin and the the Afterlives of of the the Bengal Famine of of 1943” Third Text Routledge Taylor and Francis Group 2017
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