Frano Kršinić

Vimalasari Deni: Family

Family

1950's

Oil on canvas

47.8 x 65 cm

Received in 1958 from the Board of Art Exhibitions and Panoramas attached to the USSR Ministry of Culture, Moscow.

Vimalasari Deni was one of the most active participants of the Jataka Kala Peramuna movement, whose aim was to revive ancient artistic traditions in contemporary art. The artist's works present a wide panorama of the contemporary life of his country and its people and give a vivid picture of its exuberant nature.

The picture Family has a somewhat unusual compositional arrangement: each figure emerges from behind another, and the three of them form a monolithic group. The artist manages to create highly expressive images of common people; their figures impress us with their calm dignity and strength. The woman is treated with particular care: the artist evidently admires her almond-shaped eyes and her slender figure. The picture conveys the idea of Man's harmonious union with nature. The figures are placed against a background of large banana leaves. The expressive linear treatment and the restrained palette endow the picture with poetic charm.

Sadequen - The All-Triumphant Power of Reason

The All-Triumphant Power of Reason

1970s

Oil on canvas

184.5 × 118.5 cm

Received in 1975 from the USSR Ministry of Culture, Moscow. First publication.

Sadequen is one of the leading figures in contem­porary Pakistani art. He lives and works in Lahore. His first one-man show took place in 1955, and in 1961, he was awarded the first prize at the National Art Exhibition. Since then Sadequen's pictures have received many national and international awards. In 1975, the first exhibition of his works was held in the Soviet Union, at the Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow.

Having received his education at home and having then gone through the effects of various Western influences, Sadequen began to look for his own style and artistic idiom. The mature Sadequen is a versatile artist who works in fresco and oil painting and graphic art. He also produces calligraphic compositions on paper and vellum and illustrates his own poems.

Sadequen's experimenting and search for new expressive means have gone on. The artist perceives the world in his own way and gives it a philosophic interpretation of his own. His pictures are often fraught with complicated symbolic imagery. The main theme of the artist is the fight of light and darkness, of reason and ignorance, of the progressive and reactionary. His characters are either fighters who triumph over the forces of reaction, or victims who lose this fight and suffer under the burden of their failure.

Sadequen's oil paintings are characterized by their clarity of line and subdued colouring.