Murtoza Bashir

Background and career

Bashir's father was Muhammad Shahidullah. He passed matriculation from Bogra Corronation Institute in 1949. He got involved with the movement as he was a member of the students' federation. In 1948, during the initial part of the language movement, he worked for the movement in the city of Bogra organizing a number of rallies and meetings held. In 1949, he got admitted to the Government Institute of Arts and Crafts. He spent 5 months in prison in 1950 and finally proved to be innocent. On February 21, he joined the meeting of Amtala at Dhaka University. Later that day, went to Dhaka museum to postpone the exhibition for the violating circumstances. He also joined the Gayebana Janaja on February 22 and later had to hide from the police as they tried to arrest the activists. He drew cartoons and festoons for the movement. Many of his cartoons describe the sacrifice of the martyrs of the language movement and the struggle for the mother land. Murtoza Bashir received training from the art institute of Dhaka in the fifties and went on to appear chiefly as a painter. He gained the opportunity to go to Italy for further training after completing his education.

Styles of art

Murtoza Bashir did not fix himself to a particular style and kept roaming between various figurative and semi-abstract approaches to complete abstraction. He has worked with various representational styles at different points of time. He is considered as one of the major divergent and perceptive artists of the 1950s. He practiced various styles of art to express himself through different media. He did not just create paintings, murals and sculptures, he also invested much of his time in filmmaking, research, while exploring the realms of literature.

Subjects of paintings

Most of the paintings by Murtoza Bashir during the period of 1954-1960 captured the simplified reality of the everyday middle class and lower-middle class life.

Cubism

Murtoza Bashir's attention to line and space is meticulous. It is clearly evident that he was inspired by Cubism. Each of his paintings is composed and organized in a geometric measure. From 1959, the lines became transparent and revealed even the internal structure of objects. The clash and counter clash within intersecting transparent planes create a firm image structure which gives his paintings a powerful harmony.

Key features of paintings

From 1967-1972, the artist began to be drawn towards complete abstraction. His agitated state of mind is revealed through the conflicting colors and clustered textures. The subsequent Epitaph for the Martyrs is an example of his exploration of abstraction. He also used bright flat colors when he was influenced by folk art. Geometric composition and two-dimensional structure of the pictorial surface is one of the key features of his paintings. Besides, his skills in line drawing have given his mural paintings an artistic authenticity and impressive technical proficiency.

Famous works

Awards