L IBERATION W AR IN IMAGES : P AINTINGS

Sushrita Acharjee

Apart from the camera, pencil, brush, colour and canvas too proved to be lethal weapons to offer
resistance against the West Pakistani oppressors through the medium of visual images. While
photography posited brutal facticity by bringing to global exposure images of tremendous
violence inflicted on the peoples of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), paintings, by incorporating
colours and imagination, heightened the emotional credibility of the images of brutality and
trauma. However, as in the photographs, in paintings too the images of not only suffering, but
also of glory, appear recurrently. Bangladeshi painters namely Zainul Abedin, Shahabuddin
Ahmed, Quamrul Hassan, Aminul Islam, Biren Shome, Quayyum Chaudhury and the like made
major contribution to the corpus of Liberation War paintings. Collectively, 17 Bangladeshi artists
exhibited a total of 66 paintings on the subject of the ongoing Liberation War in September,
1971 at Birla Academy, Kolkata.i The exhibition, titled Paintings and Drawings of Bangladeshi
Artists, was enormously significant in broadcasting the military cruelties, death and destruction
caused by the West Pakistani authority in Bangladesh at a time of rigorous curfew and
censorship. Artists such as Quamrul Hassan, Mustafa Manowar, Debdas Chakraborty, Nitun
Kundu, Pranesh Mandal and Biren Shome exhibited their paintings, created using watercolour,
oil colour, pen and pencil, ink, mixed medium and the like. These paintings though varied in
styles—abstract, semi-abstract and realistic, served the purpose of giving image to the atrocities
of the West Pakistani Army. Later in 2014, artist Biren Shome collected and published the prints
of these paintings by 17 artists in his book, Bangladesher Swadhinata Sangrame Shilpisamaj
(The Contribution of Fine Artists to Bangladesh Liberation War).

During the 1947 partition, amongst the many artists who moved to the Islamic state of East
Pakistan (now Bangladesh), Zainul Abedin (1914–1976) was already famous in undivided
Bengal for his artistry. Abedin’s series on the appalling Bengal famine of 1943 brought him
accolade and established him as a folk artist. He was one of the pioneers amongst Bangladeshi
artists who coalesced art movements and national movements in East Pakistan. He stressed the
importance of reverting to the grassroots, to the folk-tradition so as to exalt the indigenous,
native Bengali culture amidst an authoritarian regime. The simplistic forms, rustic earthy colour
palette and ornamental lines of folk art that he used for his famine series remain at the core of his
paintings on the Liberation War. Since the Language Movement of 1952–1971, he led the artistic
endeavours of resisting the oppressors, inciting young artists to create posters, banners,
sculptures and the like. During the military curfew, he often joined the common people in
barricading the city against the West Pakistani force; moreover, he opened his house to many
dissenting artists and intellectuals for shelter during the fateful night of 25 March.ii The War
gave him further fuel to practice figurative art form, to focus on indigenism and to portray on
canvas the people being oppressed and uprooted as well as the people emerging victorious.
Abedin’s painting titled ‘Muktijudhdho’ (Liberation War) uses the jagged, dark lines of his
famine series. Using an earthy palette of brown and grey, he paints the clustered figures of the
Liberation warriors holding rifles and moving forward.

‘Muktijudhdho’, Zainul Abedin/ https://arts.bdnews24.com/?p=6487

 Another painting, titled ‘Civil War’, by Abedin exhibits a more vibrant palette. The theme is
much the same, displaying three Liberation warriors or muktijodhdha holding rifles and the flag
of independent Bangladesh, but this painting is more figurative than his earlier paintings, using
lines and abstraction. The warm, earthy colours of murky brown, red and green are closely
associated with both the indigenous folk art and more directly to the Liberation War, as they
match the flag of Bangladesh with its rising red sun in the middle of the green backdrop.
 ‘Civil War’, Zainul Abedin/
https://www.tallengestore.com/products/civil-war-zainul-abedin-bangladesh-painter-large-art-prints
 The Bangladeshi artist who mastered the form of figurative art in oil paint was, however,
Shahabuddin Ahmed (1950–). Ahmed, who was a platoon commander during the War,
experienced the harrowing reality of it from vicinity; his artistic sensibility was thus produced by
the Liberation War. Despite fighting in the war, Ahmed is pacifist and insists that although his
paintings are often full of virile, aggressive human figures in motion and ready to charge, these
never glorify the violence of war but rather showcase the distressed, desperate, dispossessed
human beings, the victims of war, defiant in the face of misery. His paintings prove that the War
is both a source of pride and traumatic memories for him.iii His paintings, such as ‘Freedom
Fighter’, ‘Platoon’ and ‘Bangladesh’ bear testimony to this defiance. These paintings display his
mastery over figurative art form where some parts of a human figure are so distinguished that the
muscles and sinew seem to be visible to the onlooker, while other parts completely lose form and
structure; lines blur and amidst dynamic play of colours, a sturdy fist is visible or a muscular pair
of thighs can be discerned.

‘Freedom Fighter’, Shahabuddin Ahmed/Wikipedia

 Ahmed’s painting ‘Bangladesh’, for instance, blurs the human figures to focus on the dark
green flag of independent Bangladesh with a vibrant, fiery red circle in the middle of it, symbolic
of the rising sun on the Bengali soil.

‘Bangladesh’, Shahabuddin Ahmed/

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Shahabuddin-Ahmed-Bangladesh-oil-on-canvas-1997_fig6_304592761

The green–red–brown palette recurs in his painting ‘Platoon’ as well, which shows
the Liberation warriors charging ahead. His anatomical sensibility is perfected much in terms of
the Western school of figurative art. His choice of colour palette and use of light and shade too
reflect the influence of the Western masters. However, undoubtedly, Ahmed’s brilliance lies in
utilizing his Parisian training to depict images that are embedded in national history.
 ‘Platoon’, Shahabuddin Ahmed /
https://www.thedailystar.net/supplements/news/serenading-the-sublime-souls-the-soil-1840558

French art critic Gerard Xuriguers justifiably remarks about Ahmed’s oeuvre:

Shahabuddin, before settling in Paris, experienced a threatened identity in Bangladesh

that he vigorously liberated in 1971. This period of his life, both dramatic and full of
hope, has undoubtedly affected his artistic path and forged his character. However, he did
not turn into a militant painter, but simply a painter, a painter that always cared more for
painting than for the subject of his painting.iv

His painting of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, bowing his head in a gesture of perhaps humility
and salutation before the people of Bangladesh and the thousands of martyrs who laid down their
lives for the land, directs to Ahmed’s pride in his land but also his desire for peace and an end to
wars. The white, predominantly blank canvas captures the barrenness that comes at the end of
any war-like situation.
 Untitled, Shahbuddin Ahmed/ http://unboxedwriters.com/making-peace-via-art/#.YGxuxR8zbDc

Another Bangladeshi artist who went back to Bengali folk tradition to protest through art was
Quamrul Hassan (1921–1988). He was enormously influenced by both Zainul Abedin and Jamini
Roy in his stylistic approach, while his subjects traversed the grassroots people of Bangladesh
and their lived realities. He insisted on being recognised as a ‘Patua’, a folk artist. His political
paintings are motivated by his admiration for the simplistic, rural Bengali life and the subsequent
destruction of it by the West Pakistani military regime. His paintings ‘Bangladesh Before
Genocide’ and ‘Bangladesh After Genocide’ display the dichotomy between the two different
historical moments. The former shows three Bangladeshi women, painted much in the same way
he painted one of his masterpieces ‘Teen Kanya’ (Three Women), whereas, the latter shows three
skeletons in the place of those women.
 ‘Three Women’, Quamrul Hassan
https://ciiand.wordpress.com/2016/10/04/quamrul-hassan-2-december-1921-5-february-1988/
 ‘Bangladesh Before Genocide’ (left) and ‘Bangladesh After Genocide’ (right), Quamrul Hassan/
http://www.newagebd.net/article/5072/first-ever-bangladeshi-art-show-to-be-recreated

The following painting by Hassan also displays the harrowing, grotesque reality of Bangladesh
during 1971 and the appalling aftermath of the War.

Untitled, Quamrul Hassan/  https://arts.bdnews24.com/index.php/nggallery/thumbnails?p=6487

This painting seems to combine his characteristic folk style with Picasso-esque cubism. The
use of murky red–black colours, images of skulls, dismembered limbs, huddled bodies pulling at
each other create an effect of art–horror. That the figures in the painting cannot even be
recognized as humans depict what war reduces human beings to. Abedin and Hassan’s legacy
was carried forward by Qayyum Chowdhury who also focused on the contribution of the
grassroots people of Bangladesh to the Liberation War.

Untitled, Qayyum Chowdhury/https://www.observerbd.com/2015/12/01/123627.php

 Untitled, Qayyum Chowdhury/  https://arts.bdnews24.com/index.php/nggallery/thumbnails?p=6487  

Apart from these, Debdas Chakraborty’s ‘Humanity Crucified’, Mustafa Monwar’s ‘Woman
and Beast’, Rafiqun Nabi’s ‘Bijoy’ and Aminul Islam’s ‘Victim’ are some of the striking
paintings that emerged from Bangladesh in the wake of the Liberation War.
 ‘Victim’, Aminul Islam/
https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/news/how-could-we-forget-our-women-martyrs-1841143

The corpus of Liberation War paintings, thus, brings the onlookers before a painful, absurd,
horrific moment in contemporary South Asian history and succeeds in drawing a cathartic
response to the death, decay, dispossession and subsequent liberation that the Bengali peoples
experienced in the year of 1971.

                                                                                                                       
Notes
i
Biren Shome, ‘Swadhinata Sangram e Chitrashilpi Samaj’, Arts-BD News 24, (30 March 2015)
(available at https://arts.bdnews24.com/index.php/nggallery/thumbnails?p=6487; last accessed on 8 April
2021).
ii
Biren Shome, ‘Swadhinata Sangram e Chitrashilpi Samaj’, Arts-BD News 24, (30 March 2015)
(available at https://arts.bdnews24.com/index.php/nggallery/thumbnails?p=6487; last accessed on 8 April
2021).
iii
Poonam Goel, ‘Making Peace Via Art’, Unboxed Writers, (17 February 2017) (available at
http://unboxedwriters.com/making-peace-via-art/#.YG3-sh8zbDd; last accessed on 8 April 2021).
iv
Poonam Goel, ‘Making Peace Via Art’, Unboxed Writers, (17 February 2017) (available at
http://unboxedwriters.com/making-peace-via-art/#.YG3-sh8zbDd; last accessed on 8 April 2021)