Highlighting vigour and energy

Shahabuddin Ahmed is celebrated for his figurative propositions through which he often exteriorizes drama of movement. The Bangladeshi expatriate who has been living in Paris for over 35 years, is known to the wider public for his impassioned and keen depiction of the spirit of the Liberation War in 1971. Beginning his career in the early 1970s, a point of history when a new generation of artists was struggling to make the best out of the post-liberation era situation, he started to draw attention as a painter given to intense emotion while exploring human and animal forms. Connected to the concept of the Bengali national identity, his signature trait is often animated by sweeps of brush strokes and painterly contrivances leading to the illusionistic imagery.Shahabuddin’s solo painting exhibition begins tomorrow (September 28) at Gallery Chitrak in Dhanmondi.An artist who prefers working on large and middle sized canvases, often tackling sizes according to the requirement of his larger-than-life themes and style, a common thread that runs through most of his works (oil paintings) has to do with the spirit of emancipation of the human being.The created space – one that is conceived as the field of action for the protagonists whom Shahabuddin portrays – is broad, so that it provides for a large backdrop against which to enact his visual drama.Shahabuddin’s oeuvre at the Gallery Chitrak exhibition articulates the valour of the Freedom Fighters by emphasising their muscularity and robustness, as is his norm. Figures for him are means to infuse the painterly space with a mythological sense; and he brings them into view as instigators of freedom as they are made to traverse a vast, expansive domain defying time and space. One can say the artist’s personal desires, emotions, hopes, and aspirations are associated with that of the Bengali masses, whose zeal centering the independence war is unwavering.This time, the emergence of horses, Royal Bengal Tigers and bulls as motifs signifying force and strength provides a respite for viewers already familiar with his advancing human figures. The cluster of paintings present the same Bengali will that seeks to revive the forgotten ethos of the Liberation War.The portraits of Bangabandhu, Mahatma Gandhi and other legendary personalities — the political giants he has been portraying since the early1990s– are also part of the exhibition.The exhibition will continue till October 12.