Eminent artist, Iqbal Hussain’s exhibition opening at Tanzara Gallery showcases his old muses in newer colours and shades.

Back to the capital city after two years, Iqbal brings new works in new colours and fragrances of life, as he sees it. And looking at his fresh works, he seems to look at things through a coloured glass this time.

As one of the finest painters of Pakistan, Iqbal Hussain has been painting woeful tales from the forbidden zone, depicting characters spurned and neglected by our hypocritical cultural norms. In his statement on his latest works, Iqbal says that he is inspired by the life in Lahore’s Shahi Mohallah and paint the people living there, as the hard core reality of life, reflecting the day to pain and pleasures of the common people.”

However, in all his new works displayed at the exhibition, Iqbal has added a touch of brighter colours, as if to lend new hue of hope to the otherwise hopeless lives of his characters. Using lighter shades of all seasons, Iqbal seems to express the fact that they too fare affected and touched by the beauty of the changing seasons and the colours of life. With bright yellows and orange colours, Iqbal’s old buildings and narrow lanes are no more dark and dreary, but illuminated with splashes of bright colours on his canvas.

Iqbal Hussain always painted the plight of the women in despair and despondency, but in his new works, he has chosen to give them newer shades of colours, though their faces wear the same forlorn looks. Iqbal’s favourite Ravi and surrounding landscapes also come in a brighter and translucent shade. Iqbal follows his own visions and continues to paint his unconventional and radically innovative paintings. Even with new splashes of colours adding a new creative zeal to his works, Iqbal continues to immortalise his subjects in paintings that belong to Lahore’s Old Walled City streets, courtesans, dancers, musicians, and the Ravi River landscapes. The gravity of the social divide will always exist, but artists like Iqbal Hussain will always find space for light and colour to infiltrate in to the desolated lives. For many viewers, Iqbal’s paintings are like windows of the reality of this world. His work is synonymous with this subject. As an artist he has taken on the onerous task of keeping an issue alive. For Iqbal, the show goes on no matter what. The exhibition would continue at Tanzara till October 15th.

{Source: The News}