Chowrangi

December 14, 2007 marks the end of an era of abstract work and Islamic calligraphy as Gulgee and his family were found dead in their house. Police suspect that they had been murdered. While the bodies were found on the 17th, officials report that they had apparently been deceased for three days, leading to a speculative death date of December 14, 2007. Their bodies were found bound and gagged in separate rooms of the house. The initial cause of death for all three has been attributed to suffocation. Gulgee was buried on the evening of December 20, 2007, in Karachi.

This is a point of great loss, is this what we have become? A country so insecure that our talent and heritage is at risk? Will we be able to overcome this loss ever? I don’t think someone would come up and take the place of that gigantic yet simple person held.

Amin Ismail Gulgee (October 25, 1926 – December 14, 2007) was an award-winning, globally famous artist. He was a qualified engineer in the U.S. and self-taught abstract painter and portrait painter.

Born in Peshawar, Gulgee went to Aligarh University to study civil engineering and came off with flying colours. His academic achievements in the university broke all past records and the outstanding stature attained remained unsurpassed. Higher studies took him to Columbia University where he completed post-graduate studies with straight As and in record time, too. He was offered a full scholarship for doctoral studies by Harvard University, a recognition that any scholar would be proud of. When he successfully completed the academic spell in Harvard, partition had taken place and Pakistan emerged as an independent country.

Gulgee returned to Pakistan, after a short spell in Sweden, with the ambition to start a career that was close to his heart. It was not as an engineer but as an artist that the heart’s desire could be fulfilled. For a person who had prepared himself for a career that had bright prospects and immense prestige, to aspire to become an artist with an uncertain future was not only unusual but it also made him appear as a maverick.

He emerged enormously as a painter, his paintings were bright and full of color, but the paint was put on with greater sensitivity and paintings vibrated with intense feeling. Areas sung with luminous thin color, thick blobs of paint pulsated with fiber-glass tears, the brush swirled strong and free. The total effect was very gray, yet considered and well thought out. They worked extremely well, because it was all orchestrated with great care and concentration. Paintings were often commissioned, or went abroad and therefore only reached relatively small audience.

Before 1959, as portraitist, he painted the entire Afghan Royal Family. From about 1960 on, he was noted as an abstract painter influenced by the tradition of Islamic calligraphy and by the American “action painting” idiom.

Gulgee was a gifted and consummately skilled naturalistic portrait painter. He was best known worldwide for his abstract work. He had countless achievements on his part Pride of Performance, Sitara-e-Imtiaz (twice), Hilal-e-Imtiaz, and much more. Guljee, famously known, received many requests for his paintings internationally, from the Saudi royal family to the Islamabad presidency. Many of his works are placed in the “Faisal Mosque” in Islamabad. Guljee received many awards, including in Pakistan, Saudia Arabia, Japan and France. He had exhibitions in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As a nation we all moan in grief on his demise, may his soul rest in peace!

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