By IANS,
New Delhi : Leading Pakistani artist Jamil Naqsh is paying back his debt to Pablo Picasso, whom he considers the greatest art teacher of all times, with an exhibition titled “Homage to Picasso” that will open here Friday. This is the reclusive London-based artist’s first solo show in India.
“I am paying homage to Picasso not because I am influenced by him but because of the courage and freedom he gave to all 20th century artists to do whatever they want to do,” Naqsh told IANS in an e-mail interview from London.
Brought to the country by Nitanjali Art Gallery, the works that will be showcased at Alliance Francaise comprise a body of 70 drawings selected from a group of 150 canvases submitted by the veteran artist, created over several years. The exhibition will also include 16 of his recent works.
The older and the new groups of works help understand the artist’s contrasting range of genres from his early women, pigeons and horses drawn in the Mughal miniature style to the recent black and white drawings of cubist female forms – which are simplified into geometrical shapes – and coloured figurative frames in the classical European tradition.
The artist’s professional career is a tribute to the confluence of art – such as this show which is dedicated to master cubist Picasso and his influence on eastern art.
Like the legendary master, Naqsh too, has adapted form according to his own perceptions of art. The works construed for this exclusive India project and inspired by Picasso’s works prove that art is essentially without boundaries and is offered as a tribute from one luminary to another.
“I admire Picasso’s courage and freedom. I derive my own courage and freedom from Picasso, Cezanne and Paul Klee. For Picasso, lines were not important, but only forms and colours,” Naqsh said.
Though largely a drawing based exhibition, the body of works evolved around Naqsh’s well-known metaphors – woman, pigeons and horses. “I am a figurative painter with an Indian past. I admire the sculptures in Khajuraho, Puri and Bhubaneswar temples,” Naqsh said.
Naqsh does not mind coming back to women and pigeons for fresh inspiration. “As I said, I am a figurative painter doing nudes and pigeons – again the same thing. And I get the pleasure to paint and draw variation from one idea. For the last 50 years, I have been doing the same. I have never bothered to change,” Naqsh said.