Hamiduzzaman Khan

Early life and education

Khan was born in 1946 in Kishoreganj district. In 1967 he earned BFA degree from Bangladesh College of Arts and Crafts (presently Faculty of Fine Arts) from University of Dhaka. Khan studied sculpture in several cities of Europe in 1969, in Baroda from 1974 to 1976, and completed an internship in America in 1982 to 1983. He completed a Master of Fine Arts from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in 1976.

The famine of Bangla in 1943 had brought out the great artist in Zainal Abedin where the War of Liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 had inspired several youngBangaless to pick up the war theme and achieve significant success as creative personalities. Of them, Hamiduzzaman Khan established himself in sculpture. Incidentally Zainul Abedin (1914-1976), the pioneer of modern art in Bangladesh and Hamiduzzaman both came from Kishoreganj. Zainul Abedin was not only a great artist, but also a great organizer of the art movement in the country. In his struggle to establish the institute of Fine Art in Dhaka he had to sacrifice much of his creative time and energy, while Hamiduzzaman and his contemporaries had the field of sculptural art at some stage of institutional development through the efforts of the early pioneers like Novera Ahmed (b. 1930) and Abdur Razzaque (b. 1932). Hamid has chosen the path of individual creative pursuit, relentless and untiring as he is. He is a diminutive person, with a soft kind and good looking face. He speaks the typical Kishoreganj dialect, somewhat like Zainul, but not quite absorbing like the great master and yet very pleasant and likeable.

For his age, he is now 58, he looks rather young and his working habits are that of a much younger person. At this age in Bangladesh a government officer normally goes on retirement, while Hamid seems to be beginning a new phase of vigorous creative activity. His large professional studio, at the institute where he teaches, at the location of commissioned buildings or campuses, or even in travel. He is not particularly strong physically, but he scenes to have an enormous mental strength which keeps him going. Sculpture, indeed, demands tremendous energy, both physical and mental. Hamiduzzaman’s mental strength has also emboldened him physically. The fact that his wife, Ivy, is also a sculptor and a compassionate friend is to his great advantage. There is a synergic enthusiasm in both of them in journey to greater goals, towards building significant sculptural forms. Hamid has already been recognized as one of our few major modern sculptors and has earned a genuinely international stature. Indeed, he is one of the best known sculptors at home. He is definitely the most visible, through his outdoor commissioned works. He is also a printer who excels in water color and enjoys drawing as a medium to sharpen his dexterity in forms. He also tries his hand at print making. But it is as a sculptor that he himself likes to be introduced and rightly so.

Hamiduzzaman was born in 1946 in the village Sohasram in Kishporeganj. His father Sayemuddin Khan was a homeopath and his mother Rabeya Khatun, a housewife. Hamid is the youngest of three brother, one of his brother had died young. Hamid’s early education was in his native village school, Sohasram Primary School and the Banagram High School from where he matriculated in 1962. The famous Indian artist, Hemendra Majumder hailed from Gachihata, a neighboring village of Sohasram. Hamid has visited his house as a young boy and treasured this as an inspiring memory. Recognizing Hamid,s bent of mind, his father encouraged him to go for fine art. After matriculation, he came to Dhaka and went to see Zainul Abedin, the Principal of East Pakistan College of Arts and Crafts,. He was easily admitted in the college with Abedin’s blessings. He graduated from the college in 1967. Meanwhile, the college had eastablished the Department of Sculpture and Modeling with abdur Razzaqueas its founding Head. Razzaque has been a reputed painter and print maker with a master of Fine Art degree from USA.

His own time energy in setting up the new department and in developing it. Hamiduzzaman was one of the few early students of the college who took interest in sculpture, but he did not have the opportunity of taking sculpture as a formal subject as an undergraduate. Indeed he received his Bachelor of Fine Art degree from the Department of Painting and drawing. When he was still a student of final year class, he met with a very bad road accident and was seriously injured in the head. He had to be hospitalized for almost four months. However, he could sit for the final exams on time. After graduation he tried all possible means to go to England for treatment and to study western art. He was a young man with little means. He save some money by selling water colors, his family also help him financially by selling some property. Dr. M. Asiruddin, a senior surgeon who treated him in Dhaka, arranged for his treatment in a hospital in Edinburgh. Hamid managed to get a free journey on a cargo ship loaded with jute headed for Dundee. This was a turning point in Hamid’s career. On the way , when the ship broke its journey at various ports, like Cape Town in South Africa or Dakar in West Africa , he would also get down and roam around only to be impressed with the colorful dresses of the people and examples of indigenous art and crafts, masks in particular. The image made some permanent impressions in the young artist mind.

In England itself Hamid was fortunate in receiving excellent medical help and emotional support from his doctor. He was treated at the Edinburgh general hospital, under the care of Dr. Gillingham. He received all his treatment free at the hospital. (Four years later, Dr. Gillingham happened to visit Dhaka and traced Hamiduzzaman through the British Council. He was happy that Hamid was well and fully settled in his work). At the advice of the doctor, he stayed around in the UK for sometimes for total heralding of the skull plastic surgery and then went to Europe for a tour of the art capitals. Art work in London, Paris, and Rome thrilled him. The sculptures in the open, both ancient and modern, impressed him particularly. On his return to Dhaka in 1969, after nearly a year abroad, Hamid decided to specialize in sculpture. He began to work on the medium in the sculpture department at the college of Art and Crafts. The head of the department, Abdur Razzaque, welcomed him. There was also Anwar Jahan, another enthusiastic creative sculptor, to give him company. Hamid then become a faculty in the department as a teacher in August 1970. It was now a small team of teachers in the Department with a few students and with very limited resources.

By the time, Razzaque was producing both stone figurative, wood, carvings and metals both in cast and welding. His metals were mostly in abstract form. Anwar Jahan was working mostly with wood and producing large figurative. Hamid was a junior disciple, who would later find his own niche in sculpture.

Soon began the war of liberation of the country in march 1971. Hamid was then a young man of 25, the ideal age to join the war. But Hamid has just recovered from his several head injury and joined the college of Arts and Crafts as a teacher. He somehow chose to stay back in the city. In March, he was living in a rented room at the Government Quarter at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar. The House was fortunate to be left alone. Two days after the army crackdown in Dhaka at midnight of 25 March, curfew was lifted from the city for a few hours and like many other people Hamid went around the neighborhood and to the New market area and had to see many dead bodies lying unattended. The ghastly scenes made permanenmt impressions in his mind only to come back later during his Remembrance 71 works. At the first chance, he left the city, basically on foot and reached Narsingdi and from there to his village home in Kishoreganj. He came back to Dhaka in late October and joined the college. There was nothing to do at the college at that time, but he kept himself occupied with hios drawing and water colours. He took accommodation in a bachelor’s mess at free school street near hatirpool, not far from the college.

After liberation, Hamid like other artist of the country, got a new life and fresh enthusiasm and soon they become busy with creative activities. Hamid assisted his teacher Abdur Razzaque in the first ever commissioned sculptural work on the liberation war theme in 1972. A huge figure of a Freedom Fighter was cast in concrete and white cement at the Art college campus. But it was damage on the way to its destination ay joydebpur, and then a large piece was erected on the spot at the Joydebpur crossroads. This piece, called the Jagroto Chowrongi (The Vigilant Crossroads) is the figure of a lone freedom fighter with a rifel in one-hand and a grenade in other, has now become a symbol of the heroic War of Liberation. The earlier piece was placed at the entrance of the old Raj Bari (Zaminder’s Palace), now a government office at gazipur.

Hamid was awarded an Indian government scholarship in 1974 to study sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Baroda. He earned a master of Fine Arts degree from there in 1976. These two years proved to be extremely rewarding for Hamid. He not only received the essential education and practical training in the various media within sculpture, but also got the opportunity of visiting and syudying classical Indian sculptural arts. He came in close contact with major contemporary Indian artists like Golam Mohammad Shekh, K.G. Subramaniam, Shankho Chowdhury, Raghav Kaneria and found bright young artists as his fellow students, who in turn later become well-known in Indian modern art. While in India, as a young graduate student, Hamid develop his own style in bronze casting. The theme was Remembrance 71; the liberation war memories. He produced some thirty two small pieces. People in Dhaka were taken by surprise when Hamid presented some of these in the first ever national sculpture exhibition organized by the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy in Decemberf 1976. It was like reliving 1971, in the most painful way. The most poignant of his works of the time was the collection of five figures, hanged either by the neck of by the feet, head down. Each figure was like that of a crucified Christ. This was the fate that hundreds of Banglaees had met with in the hand opf the barbaric Pakistani occupation army in Bangladesh. These sculptural pieces are some of the finest and most expressive presentations of the cruel time of 1971. These are like the 1943 Famine Sketches of Zainul Abedin, simple and small, yet tremendously powerful and expressive. Another very significant piece of that time also titled Remembrance 71 was the image of a house-door with a martyred figure lying in the door step. The bronze casting was only about 62 centimeters in height, but because of its unique composition it gives the felling of enormity.

<ref>hamiduzzaman khan a modern sculpture, article, nurul islam,2005 ©

Career

Khan participated in his first national sculpture exhibition in 1976, and was awarded the first prize for his sculpture "Dorja"(door). He was appointed to make a bronze sculpture in Bangabhaban in 1981, entitled "Bird Family".

In the 1980s Khan was commissioned to decorate the Bangabhaban fountain with sculptural work. He created a bronze sculpture in Bangabhaban in 1981, entitled "Bird Family".

In 1982, Khan's sculpture exhibition about the War of Independence was held at the Faculty of Fine Arts. His sculpture "Steps" was installed in 1988 in the Olympic Park in Seoul, South Korea.

In 1990 Hamiduzzaman placed a figurative sculpture, based on a fighter at the War of Liberation with one leg and arm amputed and a riffle on the other hand, the "Samsaptak" in the arena of Jahangirnagar University.

Khan has created many paintings and sculptures while travelling abroad, including India, Korea and the United States. In 2015 he continues to exhibit his work and to conduct workshops.

Awards