JAMIL NAQSHHOMAGE TO PICASSO

LONDON

JAMIL NAQSHHOMAGE TO PICASSO

LONDON

The Albemarle Gallery is very proud to present the final stage of a trilogy of exhibitions dedicated to Jamil Naqsh’s passion and admiration of one of the greatest artists of the 20th Century.

The majority of the works in this inspired and visionary collection have never previously been exhibited, and were specifically reserved for Homage to Picasso London.

The Albemarle Gallery is privileged to facilitate this exhibition and reaffirms our total commitment to one of the most gifted, respected and revered artists living today from the Indian Subcontinent.

Tony PontoneManaging Director

JAMIL NAQSH & PICASSOBy Edward Lucie-Smith

We are accustomed to seeing works of European art that have been heavily influenced by art emanating from non-European cultures. This tendency began in fact long before Modernism, though it has been regularly associated with Modernist initiatives. As European traders made new contacts throughout the globe, they borrowed, though often only in a rather sporadic way, from the art of the regions they contacted. A striking example of this, in the 18th century, was the fashion for what was called chinoiserie, which became a component of the Rococo style in decoration and architecture. A famous example is Frederick the Great’s Chinese Teahouse, in the grounds of his palace at Potsdam, with its almost life-size Chinese figures.

Later, in the second half of the 19th century, Japanese art became a kind of cult in progressive artistic circles in Europe, thanks very largely to the sudden availability of Japanese woodcuts, after the Japanese ports were forced open by Commodore Perry’s two naval expeditions to Japan (1852-4). The radical inventiveness of Japanese figurative and landscape compositions had profound impact on aspects of Impressionist art, and, after this, on the work of Toulouse-Lautrec. This impulse was followed in due course by the borrowings from tribal African art made by the Cubists, chief among them Picasso. As is well known, the heads of the figures in his masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’Avignon are adapted from Dogon ceremonial masks.

In general these borrowings were until very recently regarded by European art historians as examples of the innate superiority of European culture – indications of its flexibility, taste for innovation and ability to absorb any new aesthetic phenomena that it encountered. Reciprocal impulses in art – for example the Company School watercolours made by Indian artists for European officials and merchants resident in their country, or the Canton School paintings and drawings produced as souvenirs for Europeans who made the long voyage to China – were dismissed as being obviously inferior to any equivalent European product.

Only very rarely did a European artist succeed in integrating himself fully with a non-European milieu. Almost the only example I can immediately think of is the Italian Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), who became a celebrated Chinese style painter, spending most of his life in Beijing. His work was much appreciated by the connoisseur emperor Qian Long.

How then are we to look at this new series of paintings by perhaps the most internationally celebrated of modern Pakistani artists, who for a number of years now has chosen to live and work in London? They are a dialogue with Picasso rather than a direct homage to Picasso, and it is interesting to think how they came about.

What one has to consider here is both the generation that Naqsh belongs to, and his intellectual background. He was born in Kairana, Utter Pradesh, a city that has a deep-rooted tradition of Indian classical music. He belonged to a Muslim family and, like so many Indian Muslims at the time of Partition, he was forced to emigrate to what became Pakistan. It was in Pakistan that he received his basic artistic education, combining a schooling in Western artistic methods with one in techniques that would have been familiar at the Mughal court, before the arrival of the British.

The new generation of artists in Pakistan, to which he then belonged, was, following World War II, thrust into a new aesthetic world by the colour illustrated art magazines and books that were then becoming widely available internationally. Essentially this meant that the achievements of the European and American Modern Movements hit them all at once, rather than arriving in historical sequence. Picasso was not a remote, venerated elder. He was someone with whom they could imagine having a conversation – a conversation on equal terms.

This is essentially what we see happening in the paintings shown here, though they have of course been made much later in Jamil Naqsh’s career. The bull or man-bull figure that was so intimately part of Picasso’s mythological world is present, but so too are images of women wearing Islamic headscarves, or even the burqa. There is a deliberate confrontation, not only of the quintessentially male with the quintessentially female, but also of two different cultural universes. In these paintings Jamil Naqsh is staking a claim to be seen, not as an artist confined to one culture, but as someone who has the right – in fact the duty – to address, using a universal visual language, an equally universal audience

Edward Lucie-SmithArt Historian, Author and Critic

1 Reclining Nude oil on canvas 91 x 183 cm (36 x 72 in)

2 Picasso in History oil on canvas 102 x 76 cm (40 x 30 in)

3 Profile with Pigeon oil on canvas 91 x 71 cm (36 x 28 in)

4 Floral Figure with Pigeon oil on canvas 71 x 71 cm (28 x 28 in)

5 Seated Figure oil on canvas 76 x 76 cm (30 x 30 in)

6 Mosaic Portrait oil on canvas 71 x 71 cm (28 x 28 in)

7 View from the Window oil on canvas 71 x 71 cm (28 x 28 in)

8 Taurean Figure oil on canvas 71 x 71 cm (28 x 28 in)

9 Veiled Figure oil on canvas 61 x 61 cm (24 x 24 in)

10 Figure with Platted Hair oil on canvas 76 x 51 cm (30 x 20 in)

11 Taurus oil on canvas 76 x 51 cm (30 x 20 in)

12 Taurean Figure I oil on canvas 61 x 61 cm (24 x 24 in)

13 Seated Nude with Pigeon oil on canvas 76 x 76 cm (30 x 30 in)

14 Veiled Figure I oil on canvas 91 x 71 cm (36 x 28 in)

15 Veiled Figure II oil on canvas 91 x 71 cm (36 x 28 in)

16 Taurus I oil on canvas 61 x 61 cm (24 x 24 in)

17 Seated Nude oil on canvas 61 x 61 cm (24 x 24 in)

18 Taurus II oil on canvas 122 x 91 cm (48 x 36 in)

19 Taurus III oil on canvas 122 x 91 cm (48 x 36 in)

20 How to Fly oil on canvas 76 x 76 cm (30 x 30 in)

21 Portrait with Dove oil on canvas 76 x 76 cm (30 x 30 in)

22 Figure with Platted Hair & Pigeon oil on canvas 76 x 76 cm (30 x 30 in)

23 Figure in Blue oil on canvas 76 x 76 cm (30 x 30 in)

24 Taurus & Veiled Figure oil on canvas 61 x 61 cm (24 x 24 in)

25 Taurus IV oil on canvas 61 x 61 cm (24 x 24 in)

26 Homage to Picasso oil on canvas 122 x 91 cm (48 x 36 in)

27 Caged oil on canvas 102 x 76 cm (40 x 30 in)

28 Profile with Two Pigeons oil on canvas 61 x 61 cm (24 x 24 in)

29 Watchful Figure with Pigeon oil on canvas 61 x 61 cm (24 x 24 in)

30 Multifaceted oil on canvas 91 x 122 cm (36 x 48 in)

31 Multifaceted I oil on canvas 76 x 76 cm (30 x 30 in)

32 Taurean Figure II oil on canvas 61 x 61 cm (24 x 24 in)

33 Taurean Figure III oil on canvas 61 x 61 cm (24 x 24 in)

34 Standing Nude oil on canvas 69 x 69 cm (27 x 27 in)

35 Standing Nude I oil on canvas 69 x 69 cm (27 x 27 in)

36 Standing Nude II oil on canvas 69 x 69 cm (27 x 27 in)

37 Standing Nude III oil on canvas 69 x 69 cm (27 x 27 in)

38 Figure with Platted Hair I oil on canvas 76 x 51 cm (30 x 20 in)

39 Looking East oil on canvas 122 x 91 cm (48 x 36 in)

1939 25 December, Born in Kairana Uttar Paradesh, India1953 Studied Indian miniature painting with the late Ustad Mohammad Sharif, National Collage of Arts, Lahore

Honours and Awards

2009 Awarded Sitara-e-Imtiaz - Pakistan2003 Jamil Naqsh; A Retrospective, An extensive retrospective exhibition at Mohatta Palace Museum, Karachi (to date the only artist to have been thus honoured in his lifetime) 1989 Pride of Performance Award, Pakistan 1989 Pursuit of ‘Excellence Award, The Artist Association of Punjab, Pakistan1982 Contribution of 20 years as 2 painter, Arts Council of Pakistan1980 Shakir Ali Award, Ministry of Culture, Government of Pakistan1968 First prize, national competition by Hamdard National Foundation for poster design to find a cure for cancer, for display and distribution by W.H.O1962 Gold Medal, Pakistan Arts Council, Karachi1961 First prize, Women’s International Club, Karachi

Solo Exhibitions

2011 A Retrospective, Albemarle Gallery, London2010 Pigeons and a slice of light, Momart art Gallery, Capital Club, Dubai Pigeons and a slice of light, Momart art Gallery and Jamil Naqsh Museum, Karachi2009 Homage to Picasso, Momart art Gallery and Jamil Naqsh Museum, Karachi2008 Homage to Picasso, Nitanjali Art Gallery, at Galerie Romain Rolland, Alliance Francaise de Delhi2005 Studio Glass Art Gallery, London2003 Jamil Naqsh: A Retrospective, Mohatta Palace Museum, Karachi Jamil Naqsh for Najmi Sura, private collection of Najmi Sura, Jamil Naqsh Museum and Momart Art Gallery, Karachi2001 Magic of the Line, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi Jamil Naqsh Museum, Karachi1999 Jamil Naqsh Museum, formal inauguration, Karachi1998 Homage to Marino Marini, Jamil Naqsh Museum and Momart Art Gallery, Karachi1997 Mother and Child, dedicated to Dr. Faridon Setna, a private viewing hosted by Meher and Husain Sheriff, Trustees ofj Jamil Naqsh Foundation1996 Private viewing hosted by Amina and Jehangir Tareen, Trustees of Jamil Naqsh Foundation, Lahore Modern Manuscripts, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi Beyond Words, The Art Gallery, lslamabad Homage to Marino Marini, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi Jamil Naqsh Foundation and Museum, established in Karachi1971 Pakistan Arts Gallery, Karachi1967 Pakistan Arts Council, Karachi1965 The Pak-Brazil Friendship Association, Beach Luxury Hotel, Karachi1963 Pakistan Arts Council, Karachi1962 Pakistan Arts Council, Lahore

Jamil Naqsh & Edward Lucie-Smith

Special Projects

1977 Mural executed in oil on canvas for the Shakir Ali Museum, Lahore1974 Mural executed in oil on canvas for the Cancer Society of Pakistan, Karachi, for display and distribution by [he1973 Calligraphy executed in oil on canvas for the Hamdard National Foundation1960/8 Served as co-editor of Seep Urdu Literary Quarterly and Arts lnternational 1970-73 President, Pakistan Painters Guild

Group Exhibitions

2007 Rhythms of Illumination, Nitanjali Art Gallery, Grand Hyatt, Dubai Resplendent Reveries, Nitanjali Art Gallery, Grand Hyatt, Dubai Uninterrupted Journeys, Nitanjali Art Gallery, ITC Grand Central, Mumbai2006 Euphonic Palettes - Dubai, Nitanjali Art Gallery, Grand Hyatt, Dubai Euphonic Palettes, Nitanjali Art Gallery, Galerie Romain Rolland, Alliance Francaise de Delhi, sponsored by Deutsche Bank Pakistani Master’s Show, Nitanjali Art Gallery at Park Hotel, New Delhi Ibteda - The Beginning, Gandhara - Art.com (Pakistan’s virtual exhibition) Paintings and Sculptures by 45 Artists, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi2005 lndian Art Unbound II, Nitanjali Art Gallery at the Grand Hyatt, Dubai Miniature Show, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi2004 Modern Calligraphic Paintings & Ceramics, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi2003 Recent paintings by 23 Painters, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi Modern Calligraphic Paintings & Ceramics, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi2002 Modern Calligraphic Paintings & Ceramics, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi2001 Modern Calligraphic Paintings & Ceramics, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi2000 Water Colour by 20 Painters, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi Paintings by 15 Painters, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi1999 Recent Paintings by 20 Painters, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi1998 Drawings, Prints & Etchings, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi Modern Calligraphic Paintings & Ceramics, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi1997 Modern Calligraphic Paintings & Ceramics, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi1995 Water Colour Exhibition, Momart Art Gallery, Karachi Group Show, Momart An Gallery, Karachi1992 India Asia Museum, Pasadena, CA, U.S.A Trivandrun and New Delhi1972 Painters from Pakistan, Pakistan National Council of Arts in Paris, London, Munich, New York, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Italy, Libya, Morocco, Ghana and Sudan1970 Gallerie Christoph Durr, Munich, West Germany1964 Painters from Pakistan, Ceylon1963 Painters from Pakistan, Nepal1953 National Art Competition, Multan

Edward Lucie-Smith addressing guests at the Jamil Naqsh reception. Albemarle Gallery 2011

© ALBEMARLE GALLERY MMXII

Photography by Guy Lockwood and Changwoo Ryu

ALBEMARLE