A day-long Zainul-Charukala Festival to celebrate the birth centenary of Shilpacharya Zainul Abedin ended in Barisal on Friday.
An exhibition of painting, arts and crafts of Zainul, children’s painting competition and discussion on life, works and achievements of Abedin had been organised as part of the festival at Barisal Ashwini Kumar Hall.
Charukala Barisal, the only fine arts institution in the city, arranged the day-long programme. The evening session included an award ceremony for winners of the painting competition as well as a cultural function.
In the discussion presided over by Altaf Hossain, president of Charukala, the exponents opined that as an artist of exceptional talent and international reputation, Zainul Abedin is considered to be the founding father of Bangladeshi art. The painting maestro was also involved in the Liberation War movement and the cultural movement to re-establish the Bengali identity.
In 1948, he helped found the Government Institute of Arts and Crafts (now the Faculty of Fine Arts) in Dhaka, the first modern art institution in what was then East Bengal. Not only promoting modern art, he worked tirelessly to encourage folk art in Bangladesh and founded the Folk Art Museum at Sonargaon, near Dhaka in 1975.
The artist is famous for his landscape paintings, which mainly delve into scenic and panoramic beauty of rural Bengal.
Zainul Abedin, who was born in December 29 in 1914 and died on May 28 in 1976, got his breakthrough in 1944 with his paintings on the 1943 famine. Like many of his contemporaries, his paintings on famine are his signature works.
-With New Age input
