Bold imprints

Mashkoor Raza is the only artist in the world to have celebrated a golden jubilee of solo exhibitions

Karachi: One of the most celebrated artists in Pakistan and a recipient of the Pride of Performance Award, Mashkoor Raza needs no introduction. Over the last five decades, he has established himself as a canvas identity for depicting the brute force of horses and silent nude figures. His boldly rendered horses and glamorous nudes in abstract have become his inimitable signature style.

He is acclaimed for his non-representational and abstract/cubist styles. He creates aesthetic, transparent impressions by combining abstraction and cubist elements, which allows his images to take on varying shapes.

Mashkoor has held solo exhibitions nearly every year since graduating from the Karachi School of Art (KSA) in Fine Art in 1972, where he finished first in the First Division and won a gold medal. He is the only artist in the world to have celebrated a golden jubilee of solo exhibitions. After Sadequain, he is perhaps Pakistan’s most prolific artist.

He has also taken part in numerous national and international exhibitions around the world, and his paintings have been chosen for the Victoria and Albert Museum’s art collection in London.

Nadeem Zuberi’s book ”Mashkoor Raza’s Journey” discusses some of the many different experiences of Mashkoor’s life and the various stages of progress of his work, revealing a story of the ability to motivate one’s creativity and the journey of self-discovery.

Mashkoor, a Pride of Performance winner, is known for his non-representational and abstract/cubist styles, which have become his distinct signature.

Mashkoor’s major works were of high quality; bold colour combinations and fine strokes captured the diverse presentation of women and horses in appealing semi-abstract paintings, while aesthetically pleasing calligraphy was also part of his works.

The horse, a majestic animal, holds immense fascination for Mashkoor. Horses appear in his paintings as both a subject and a symbol, where he portrays them as a symbol of beauty, power, and speed.

Horses have been incorporated into paintings by mostly Dutch and French artists over the centuries. No one, however, has created such ingenious and intricate abstract compositions with lively and exciting line work or used such glowing colours in variegated harmonies as Mashkoor in Pakistan.

Even in the realm of anatomy and figure painting, which is thought to be one of the most difficult endeavours, Mashkoor leaves an indelible imprint. Almost all of his figures are in cubist form, with the authoritative drawing making each a work of art to behold.

Mashkoor employs a visual language of form, colour, and line to create a composition that contains a degree of independence from visual references in the real world—a woman and a horse. Abstraction in the depiction of imagery in art denotes a departure from reality. This deviation from accurate representation can be minor, partial, or total, and Mashkoor opts for the partial one.

This, of course, is not to contend that abstract art cannot be as moving and powerful as anything that realistic art has to offer. However, in the case of abstract work, the artist’s task becomes much more difficult to elicit the kind of response from the viewer that good representational art can. Mashkoor, on the other hand, has done it for the past five decades.