Art | BANGLADESH Bangladeshi Artists ABDUS SHAKOOR
Born in 1947, Shakoor graduated with a Fine Arts degree from the College of Arts and Crafts, Dhaka, and he later received a postgraduate diploma from University of Baroda, India. He has participated in many national and international exhibitions and has trained in different art media. For a time, Shakoor focused on murals, tapestries and ceramic art, and his early work had a strong social content, and a style that veered towards abstraction. However, a trip to Baroda changed both his style and orientation to art: Shakoor became connected with the Revivalist Group, the members of which were trying to revive ethnic and indigenous art traditions. Inspired, Shakoor developed characters from Mymensingh Geetika, a collection of medieval ballads, into strong drawings, ornamentations and contrasting color schemes, garnished with Bangla calligraphic details.
RAFIQUN NABI
Born in 1943, Rafiqun Nabi is a stalwart of the artists who grew up in Dhaka during the fifties and sixties. After graduating from the Institute of Fine Arts in Dhaka, Nabi completed his postgraduate studies in Greece. He is known for his wide spectrum of work that includes painting, drawing, printmaking, writing, cartoons and activism, all which serve his single- minded purpose: to capture the important moments in history that he has witnessed. Furthermore, Nabi’s life mission is to protest all forms of oppression. In the beginning of his career, Nabi worked as a nature watercolorist, and his use of color continues to concentrate on tonalities and transparencies to give a feeling of fluidity through all of his current mediums. Although he has experimented in oils and pastels, Nabi prefers mediums in which he can use sweeping brush strokes, firm line drawings and graduated color schemes.
NAZIA ANDALEEB PREEMA
A prominent contemporary artist in Bangladesh, Preema studied art at the Institute of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka. Her artistic endeavors include painting, graphic design, web design and corporate concept development. The exploratory nature of her artistic creations and her ideas about life, emotion and the human thought process are highlighted through her dynamic expressions in each medium that she explores. Exhibiting at several solo and group expositions and creating at workshops and residencies around the world, Preema has been rewarded for her ideas and work by local and global art fraternities. Also a curator centered on creating exhibitions solely by women artists, Preema is pursuing a new project: Empowering and inspiring women through electronic media programs. With a great desire to leave her mark in the art scene of Bangladesh and beyond, Preema is the editor of the Bangladesh Brand Forum.
KANAK CHAKMA
Kanak Champa Chakma, born in 1963 in Bangladesh, received her Master’s in Fine Arts from the University of Dhaka. She is a recipient of several national and international awards and has participated in solo and group art exhibitions around the globe. As a close observer of the landscape and the life of the Chittagong Hill Tracts peoples, Chakma derives the inspiration for her works from this area. Her work is mainly abstract with a marked presence of the human figure, mostly women, enhanced by strong, flowing colors and dynamic figuration.
MOHAMMAD IQBAL
Mohammad Iqbal was born in 1967 in Chuadanga, Bangladesh. He graduated with a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Dhaka, and Iqbal further earned an M.E. and a PhD in Fine Arts from Japan. He has participated in numerous shows and has received several national and international awards, including the Nomura Shoken Grand Prize, a prestigious Japanese award. A passionate artist, Iqbal is preoccupied with environmental issues. He is concerned about the future generation, and his portraits of children reflect their emptiness, loneliness and despair. With global figures, striking colors and subtlety, his artwork speaks to the soul.
ROKEYA SULTANA
Rokeya Sultana is a graduate from the Institute of Fine Arts in Dhaka, and she further received her MFA from the Bishwa Bharati University, West Bengal, India. Sultana has received significant attention for her work recently, including a major award at the 9th Asian Biennial in 1999, the first ever for a woman artist from Bangladesh. An innovative artist, Sultana enjoys experimenting with new horizons and new techniques, deeply expressing all of her feelings, emotions and practices in her works. Finding the rapport between human beings, between colors on the canvas and between forms, Rokeya Sultana paints relationships. Sultana’s work is marked by an intelligent use of form, a careful use of space and an evocative use of color.
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