K M A Quayyum emerged as a gifted young artist in the early seventies. In the following four decades he innovated, matured and developed into a painter with a distinctive mark of his own. Quayyum remained an ardent romantic throughout his evolution and although his paintings have undergone transitory variations, his basic mood of a romantic worshipper of nature has prevailed for a long time. The artist’s preoccupation with nature is not his only trait. He has also done works that contain figures and others elements, conveying a variety of moods and sensations. Qayyum refrains from making his pictures mere depictions of the surroundings, as we ordinarily perceive. It is but natural that his efforts have been complimented with awards and citations including the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Award for the best artwork in the 12th National Art Exhibition in 1996.

The artist’s present show which is titled Antarlin Sangbed (Sensation Within) depicts an imaginary world of abstract formations and unfamiliar imagery. Done mostly in vivid colours and subtle tonal effects, these works unfold before us an unknown region of soothing beauty and formal grandeur. The artist goes deep into microscopic details of this make-believe world and presents it in an atmosphere and aura of its own. The works, executed mostly in pen and watercolour on paper, emphasize the near-organic shapes and the textured surfaces created by hatched pen-lines. The exhibition also features some earlier work. Quayyum’s current repertoire showcased at the Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts could well be termed the beginning of a new phase where the artist seems concerned more with a complex relationship between form and space as well as between himself and the unknown world beyond him. This exhibition would hopefully reveal before the viewers, the endeavours of a talented artist who is prepared to break new ground.

Abul Mansur