Trails of the Lost Art of SADEQUAIN (Paperback)

Description

By most estimates, Sadequain executed more than 15,000 pieces of artwork in his life — murals, paintings, drawings, and calligraphies. But he carelessly gave most of them away to institutions and individuals. In many cases, people walked away with significant numbers when they found Sadequain in high spirits, and often they were simply stolen as it has been reported in newspapers. In its relentless pursuit to catalog Sadequain’s paintings, murals, calligraphies, drawings, and poetry, the SADEQUAIN Foundation is planning a 12-volume catalog, comprising of more than 1,000 pages of text and 1,800 images, by far the largest catalog project on any artist of the country. To that end, this book is dedicated to chronicling the trail of significant pieces of Sadequain’s artwork that were ultimately tracked down in North America. The primary focus of this book is a large mural painted in 1966, titled “Pakistan,” which never saw a single sunrise in the country it was named after. It was ultimately found at a venue that did not match the one identified in Sadequain’s official biography. In other words, it did not belong where it was found. Another piece of work was a rare 1954 painting that was done in Quetta, which Sadequain gave as a gift to an American geologist working in Pakistan, and it later traveled from Quetta to Washington D.C. to North Carolina, to Kentucky, and finally to California. Similarly, the other pieces of artwork in this book have intriguing provenances and are duly recorded for the sake of art history. For the sake of clarification, the term mural is used in this book for a set of large paintings, when assembled in the right sequence, form the complete mural. On occasions, the terms mural or painting are used interchangeably when they pertain to the discussion about the mural titled “Pakistan.” Great civilizations and nations have survived the rigors of time because of, in great part, the resilience of their unique and distinguished cultures, and not the man-made boundaries that confined the land masses under their given names. Throughout the course of history, many artificial boundaries have been altered and so have been the names of countries that once identified the confines of those boundaries. Although the names of such stalwarts as the poets Firdausi, Ghalib, and Iqbal would transcend through the ages and forever be associated with the culture they defined, the names of the rulers of their periods would be nothing more than footnotes in the annals of history. This notion places a great deal of responsibility upon the artists and writers of any given period and region to honor the mission expected of them. Dr. Akbar Naqvi, a recognized author, states in his book, IMAGE and IDENTITY, “If Sadequain had done nothing but his drawings, he would still be among the innovators of modern art in the country.” Building upon Dr. Naqvi’s statement, it can be boldly declared that if Sadequain had done nothing but his murals, he should be considered as the leading artist of not just the country but the region. Mural art is not everyone’s cup of tea. If executing a painting represented taking a single step, then executing a mural would be like running a marathon. And if executing a painting was like writing an essay, then executing a mural would be similar to writing a book.