News & Updates
Essex Fine Art are looking to purchase works by the following artists :
Mashkoor RAZA / A Q ARIF / Iqbal HUSSAIN / A S RIND / Ahmed KHAN / Amjad BUTT / Salman FAROOQUI
or any other major Pakistani / Indian artists , if you are interested in selling works please contact us.
=========================================================================
The art of imagination
Recently, Mehtab Ali exhibited his collection of paintings in Karachi. The striking part is that a large number of his paintings are based on women, each background pointing to a different meaning. You! takes a look…
By Fatima Niazi
Painting is not just a practice of applying colour to a surface but it is also an activity which requires a combination of drawing, composition and other aesthetic means in order to portray one’s desires. Not everyone can be an artist as it involves a lot of imagination and creativity – indispensable to become an artist. There are different ways of depicting your inner thoughts through painting as it can be naturalistic, representational, photographic or abstract. The history of the world is scattered with memorable pieces of art that are now appreciated and respected on a worldwide basis. All an artist can dream of is to have his expressive work be appreciated and one Pakistani artist who seems to have made a mark is Mehtab Ali.
Mehtab Ali is a self taught artist who is specialised in still life, landscape, portraits and cultural paintings. It is important for everyone to climb the ladder of success at the right pace and this artist in particular has had his own share of creative experiences before he reached the top. He started his career with making illustrations for different magazines and slowly and gradually he made his place as an accomplished artist in literary circle. With five exhibitions under his belt the artist recently presented his work at the Citi Art Gallery, Clifton, Karachi.
His paintings are based on figurative work with the final product being an unrealistic impressionist style. This idealistic image is portrayed according to the artist’s perception and how he wants to represent his ideas. When questioned, Mehtab Ali shared, “I wanted to show the domestic woman in my paintings, and by domestic I mean the type of dresses and jewellery the women in our country wear. If you view my paintings you will instantly be able to spot the desi feel each piece carries.” A large number of his paintings are based on women, each background pointing to a different meaning.
The paintings alone are simple and well illustrated but the quality differentiating them are the cracks drawn over the paintings. Yes, if you are assuming the cracks were present in the canvas then you are in for a surprise as each and every crack is a result of creative strokes from a thin paint brush. The cracks make the paintings look distorted and have been added on purpose to break the continuity and to add depth to the image. Another
trait in the paintings worth mentioning is the visibility of the texture in the background on the clothes of the model.
A painting of one artist can be differentiated from another through the painter’s perception and representation of intensity. Each representation, however, is dependant on the artist’s inspiration and the art form he chooses to follow. Mehtab Ali explained, “My inspiration is Rembrandt, one of the greatest painters in European history. His classical iconography moulded to fit the requirements of his own experience and I, to a large extent, follow his ideology of art.”
Mehtab has also broken traditional style of paintings by making a self portrait in which he is shown painting a model. With all these innovative artists emerging on the Pakistan art scene, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if Pakistan ends up finding its own Cezanne or Picasso!
=====================================================================
Daily Times
Pakistan
01st November 2009
Pakistan-US relations: split is showing in art circles
By Mahtab Bashir
ISLAMABAD: Political differences regarding US-Pak relations directly influence artists and it was witnessed in preview of a painting exhibition by two artists at Nomad Gallery.
The exhibition of contemporary paintings by Syed Faraz Ali and Asma Asif titled ‘Political & Thought-Provoking Art’ was previewed here on Sunday. Intricate techniques of mix-media, ink graphite on arches paper and acrylic on canvas have been used in the exclusive collection of 17 pieces.
Impressed by work of Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVSAA) graduates, Nomad Gallery Director Nageen Hyat said, “Nomad Gallery feels proud to display innovative, symbolic and political paintings by Faraz Ali and Asma Asif which send out a powerful message through their political and thought-provoking art pieces.”
Faraz’s striking compositions made a statement on the people lost in a degenerated world, where individuals became subjects of an ideology, system or society that tended to enslave them, Hyat explained. Talking about Asma’s paintings, she opined that Asm’s work was self-reflective, sensitive and thought-provoking.
Majority of Faraz’s paintings are naked torsos symbolically bearing a seal either from the government of Pakistan or a head of US government to gag their freedom of expression. Every character on the canvas is either blindfolded or tied.
Asma’s cache of nine paintings titled ‘What is Our Destiny …’ represents a self-documentation of the last eight months of her life when she remains in search of destination. At last, she has to simply wait for the future to play itself out.
Explaining her works, Asma says the shoes and feet she uses in majority of her paintings as a symbol that represents the wear and tear she experiences through the hectic journey of self-exploration.
She says using myriad of colours, layers of thought, and a smattering of textures, she has built up her mind to a crescendo of the very journey that made her the person that she is today.
“Because I am a frequent traveler between Karachi and San Francisco, I want to bridge the gap between these two great cities and to promote art and culture. I may get my destination at either place,” Asma said.
This is Asma’s first show at Nomad Gallery, whereas her exhibitions were widely arranged all over the country. One of her painting reflects her own bitter experience, when her lungs were malfunctioning. “One of the lungs in the painting shows how painful I was when I was going suffering this disease,” she said.
Faraz said, “Nothing around us is certain and everything is under question. Brutal positivism is in play, recognizing the facts without becoming excited. Reality in my work might be understood to be infinitely complex and perhaps ultimately elusive.”
He says he uses techniques of silky screen and coffee stain that is used in textile making. This is his second exhibition at Nomad Gallery.
=======================================================================
Daily Times
8th September 2009
Grandeur Art Gallery exhibits Islamic calligraphy
By Fawad Ali Shah
KARACHI: Inscribing words on canvas is never an easy task as a minor jerk of the fingers could ruin your whole work. You have to take extra care when the words you are inscribing are verses from the holy Quran. However, there are many artists who have attained perfection in the art of Quranic calligraphy and whenever art aficionados look at their works, they cannot resist appreciating them.
Grandeur Art Gallery (GAG) held an exhibition of calligraphic paintings inscribed with verses from the Holy Quran on Monday. The paintings showed how sensitive this form of art was and how an artist could use his imaginative powers to create beautiful masterpieces.
GAG has not only exhibited works of senior artists like Mashkoor Raza and Sadequain, but also some aspirants like AS Rind.
The paintings on display could be divided into two simple categories: calligraphy done on white canvas with traditional black colours, and imaginative paintings created by blending different colours that give them an abstract look.
In almost all of his paintings, Mashkoor Raza had tried to attract the awestruck glimpses of art admirers by combining the colours blue, red and black in such a way that the Quranic verses seemed to be peering out from the background.
Sadequain’s works were clear-cut and depicted the beauty of simplicity in the art of calligraphy.
GAG Director Neshmia Ahmad told Daily Times that the exhibition was arranged in accordance with the holy month of Ramazan.
Neshmia said that people were showing an interest in simple and vivid calligraphic pieces as opposed to abstract ones, adding that the turn out was good.
Other artists whose works were displayed included Akram Spaul, Nazir Ahmad, Naseem Nisho Fauz, Mansoor Salim, Irfan Ahmed Qureshi, Muhammad Ali Zahid and Ghulam Murtaza.
=========================================================================
BBC News 11th July 2008Prices soar for modern Pakistani art |
|||||||
 At a newly established art gallery in Pakistan’s southern city of Karachi curious visitors sneak inside – hours before the formal opening of an art show.
They are looking for paintings by Mansoor Aye, who died earlier this year, or by the elderly and frail Tasadduq Sohail. In Pakistan’s increasingly speculative art market, posthumous sales of better known painters can bring windfall profits. But even these early birds at the Ocean gallery are disappointed. Like most art exhibitions around the country these days, nearly all the paintings carry red tags – meaning they are sold. Studio deals culture Pakistan’s art market has gone crazy over the past year, with prices multiplying 10 to 20 times over. And famous artists are not the only beneficiaries.
In the nearby Unicorn gallery, a fresh art school graduate declines an attempt by a collector to reduce the price of her oil-on-canvas portrait of a woman from $580 to $450. This is in sharp contrast to veteran painter Tasadduq Sohail who hardly received more than $50 for a painting until he was 65. But then in 2006, one of his works was sold for $32,000 at an international auction. “It is not easy to haggle with young artists these days, they know they will find buyers,” says Seemah Niaz, the curator at Unicorn. “They don’t even have to display their work at the galleries, because buyers often visit their studios to make deals,” she says. ‘Far cry’ Major buyers often do not even find it necessary to look at what they are buying.
“I know buyers who have been sending their servants to book entire shows before they open,” says Saquib Hanif, a collector and art critic based in Karachi. “This is a far cry from the buyers of the 1950s through to the 1980s who would take a long and hard look at the piece before deciding whether it was worth hanging on the wall,” he says. So why such an indiscriminate rush now for modern Pakistani art? One reason is that the traditional art collector has been replaced by speculators from the corporate sector. “Many investors in the stock market and real estate sectors have realised that investment in art is comparatively more reliable and secure,” says Zohra Hussain, the owner of Karachi’s oldest gallery, Chawkandi Art. “What’s more, liberal bank credits and low interest rates during the last few years have enabled people to shovel larger amounts of money into art.” All this when recently the Pakistani economy was growing at over 8% a year. “The trend started in the West, and the oil-rich Arab sheikhdoms took a fancy to it,” says journalist and veteran art critic Akbar Naqvi.
“Since the Arabs did not have a model of their own, they started extending patronage to artists in Iran and South Asia to decorate their galleries.” An equal interest in South Asian art by Indian and Pakistani expatriate communities in the West created incentives for major Western auction houses to start offering South Asian art at their sales. Some of these auction houses, like Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams, have extended their operations to Dubai in the last few years. The boom for Indian art arrived much earlier than that for Pakistani art and some works of Indian masters have fetched nearly $500,000 at recent international auctions. Works of Pakistani masters are now following suit. A lapis lazuli mosaic in metal by Ismail Gulgee was sold for $336,000 at Bonhams’ Dubai auction in March. “Auction sales do not reflect the actual worth of an artist, but they do place him in a certain price slot so that people are willing to pay corresponding prices for his or her subsequent works,” says Zohra Hussain. In other words, the net worth of today’s artist is based on his or her economic viability rather than aesthetic credibility. “A great artist is the one who sells, it is a simple theory of supply and demand,” says Mansoor Halim, an art collector and executive vice president of ACE Securities business firm. ‘No direction’ The pressures of demand are leading some artist to increase their output.
Mashkoor Raza, a prolific artist who paints horses and women, says he starts work on four new canvases every day. He wastes no time waiting for an inspiration. “I often dream up my ideas in sleep,” he says. Fifty-two canvases he recently put on show in an Islamabad gallery were all sold – before the show opened. Akbar Naqvi is worried about this state of affairs. “There is a lot of creative energy in the Pakistani art scene, but there is no direction,” he says. “Nobody appears to be breaking new ground, or attempting to revisit his or her roots in their own individual way, as the early modern artists like Zubaida Agha, Shakir Ali and others did,” Mr Naqvi says. |
|||||||
A great artist is the one who sells, it is a simple theory of supply and demand 
=========================================================================
ARTICLE 1165 – Pakistani contemporary art trebles in value over five years
[August 04. 2009 8:05PM UAE / August 4. 2009 4:05PM GMT] Bronwyn Curran, Foreign Correspondent
Noshaba Qadir, curator of the Tanzara Gallery. Katherine Kaviat for The National
ISLAMABAD Less exposed than its Indian neighbour’s output, contemporary art in Pakistan has evolved beyond its traditional domain of miniaturists and calligraphers to nurture a stable of modern figurative and landscape artists, now firmly established as investment commodities. “Contemporary art has really come up in a big way in Pakistan. I see it in the gallery. People really want to acquire art now,” said Noshaba Qadir, curator of the Tanzara Gallery in Islamabad. “Even those with little art appreciation, or people who couldn’t afford it before, now want a piece or two in their homes.”
Values have trebled in the past five years, according to the director of the Artchowk.com website, Camilla Chaudhary. One of the emerging artists her website represents, Mansur Salim, has seen his prices triple in the last two years. “Five years ago the Pakistani art market was in its nascent stage. Great strides have been taken to bring international recognition both for artists and local galleries, and in developing a local collector base. This has resulted in almost across board increases in the value of art,” Mrs Chaudhary said.
As an investment commodity it has soared “tremendously”, she said. “One of the reasons is that Pakistani art remains much cheaper than Indian and Middle Eastern art. Pakistani artists and galleries started getting international recognition in the latter half of the boom in the international art market. As a result, the prices started from very low, saw organic growth and were not as inflated as some of the works from other Asian countries, particularly India. Thus they have not seen as large a correction under the economic downturn.
“If an investor does some research on the local art scene and buys a good emerging artist he can expect a 100 to 300 per cent profit, while for an established artist he can see a 50 to 75 per cent increase depending on the artist.” Eighty per cent of the work that sold at ArtChowk’s first exhibition in the Middle East a year and a half ago has doubled in value, she added. Tanzara Gallery’s Mrs Qadir cites the works of the Islamabad-based landscape artist Ghulam Rasul, whose prices hit US$15,000 (Dh55,200) in his last exhibition at Tanzara, and Raja Changez Sultan, whose figuratives and Himalayan Odyssey series, exploring the play of light on mountains, have more than doubled since 2007.
These days a handful of Pakistani artists command major international recognition and global price-tags as high as $500,000, such as Rashid Rana. Mohammad Talpur’s hypnotic arrangements of lines have captured international collectors’ imaginations and command well over $10,000. Shazia Sikander, a graduate of Lahore’s National College of the Arts, now based in the US, produces modern miniatures which are fetching huge prices in the US and have won the attention of the avid modern art collector Bill Gates.
“It’s impossible to purchase a Talpur now. They’re all sewn up,” said Mrs Qadir.
The artist Mr Sultan, who chaired Pakistan’s National Council of the Arts for 4½ years, said Pakistani art only found its own identity last decade. “Pakistani art from the 1950s to 1980s had an imitative effect about it,” Mr Sultan said. “Then there was an era of calligraphy. In the 1970s and 1980s everyone thought calligraphy was the thing, because in the Middle East there was big demand … Over the past 15 years people seem to be getting away from miniatures and into three-dimensional and other kinds of perspectives. But with a colour and form and symbolism that is more individual. Patronage has been growing, especially from expatriate Pakistanis. From the mid-90s to the present you see really phenomenal increases.”
The late Sadequain, revered muralist, painter and calligrapher, dazzled the world stage in the 1960s in Paris, winning the ultimate avant-garde accolade of being chosen to illustrate Albert Camus’ work The Stranger, only to fade from global recognition on his return to Pakistan in the 1970s. He is hailed in the domestic market nevertheless. He gave away most of his works, and as those works are relinquished and creep into the market, some command close to $75,000, Mrs Chaudhary said.
The emerging artists Raza Mashkoor, who specialises in horses, and AS Rind, creator of metallic faces of long-necked ethnic women, have seen significant price hikes. “Just recently Mashkoor’s work went to the auction houses – Sotheby’s and Bonham’s in Dubai – and it was only then he doubled the prices from last year,” said Mrs Qadir. The calligraphy master Ahmed Khan, hailed as “the new Gulgee” after Pakistan’s late doyen of calligraphers who was murdered in his Karachi home along with his wife in 2007, recently had a two-by-three foot piece fetch $20,000 at Bonham’s.
The Pakistani diaspora in Dubai are major investor customers. One Dubai-based client turned up to the Tanzara Gallery with floor plans for his under-construction apartment and asked Mrs Qadir to select 22 paintings for its walls. Installations and video art are now entering the market. “These new art forms are pushing the boundaries of what was considered art and in doing so are approaching issues and questions with a new consciousness and narrative,” Mrs Chaudhary said.
===================================================================