Safiuddin Ahmed

Safiuddin Ahmed

Born & Death
1922-2012
Details
Safiuddin Ahmed was one of the founding members of the art institute in Dhaka. A graduate of the Kolkata art school, his teachers there were Mukul De, Basantakumar Ganguly, Ramendranath Chakravarty, Atul Bose, Prahlad Karmakar, Rissen Mitra, Abdul Moin, among others. He trained in printmaking in London in the fifties. Ahmed’s constant preoccupation with art, until the very last days, is exemplary. Safiuddin’s paintings and prints portray, often in swirling vigorous forms and motifs, spectacular symbols such as eyes, fishing nets and boats. He continuously evoked these images to articulate his understanding of the disquiet and anxiety of the time. Safiuddin received the President’s Gold Medal from the Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata (1945), President’s Medal for Pride of Performance in Fine Arts, Pakistan (1963), Ekushey Padak (1978), and Independence Award (1996), among many honours and awards. Ahmed had only two solo shows in his lifetime, in 1959 in London and in 2008 at the Bengal Gallery.

Some of Works