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Lot Essay
Each part of the canvas is painted with loving care, each brush-stroke is aware of itself, every impression is infused with light, which makes the picture surface vibrate with a transcendental glow. Gulgee, while painting, wants to carry the viewer along by appealing to his emotional and sensual faculties.
- I. Hassan, 1991
Ismail Gulgee, one of Pakistan’s most renowned modern masters, enjoyed great patronage and government support throughout an illustrious career that was tragically cut short by his untimely murder in 2007 at his home in Karachi. Gulgee first studied to be a civil engineer at Aligarh University before moving to the United States to attend Columbia and then Harvard University. It was only later that he turned his attention to painting, soon proving to be a highly gifted portraitist. As the esteemed national portrait painter of Pakistan in the 1950s, Gulgee gained several high profile commissions and his patrons included King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan. Over the course of his career, Gulgee painted dignitaries from around the world including United States presidents Jimmy Carter and George Bush Sr., as well as King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, King Hussein of Jordan and Farah Pahlavi, Empress of Iran.
After attending an exhibition of the American abstract painter and muralist Elaine Hamilton in Karachi in 1960, Gulgee’s style went through a radical transformation. The gestural dynamism he saw in Hamilton’s work appealed to him and he adapted the energy of Western action painting, reinterpreting it into a uniquely Pakistani context. Gulgee began this with abstract interpretations of Arabic script, a major contribution to calligraphic abstraction, a genre of which Sadequain and Shemza are recognized as pioneers. In the 1970s, Gulgee took his practice further, using mixed media to create sumptuously decorated canvases adorned with gold and silver leaf, mosaic like pieces of mirror and richly impastoed pools and dots of color. Often set against vibrant backgrounds, these surfaces appear like galaxies and constellations studded with stars and planets. The artist's Cosmic Hexagon Series, which is believed to comprise only three known examples including the present lot, is from this critical body of work where decoration and the materials themselves are celebrated in equal measure. Every inch of the canvas is stunningly adorned, and Gulgee’s use of a hexagon-shaped canvas, particular to this series, gives this picture an additional kaleidoscopic quality.
- I. Hassan, 1991
Ismail Gulgee, one of Pakistan’s most renowned modern masters, enjoyed great patronage and government support throughout an illustrious career that was tragically cut short by his untimely murder in 2007 at his home in Karachi. Gulgee first studied to be a civil engineer at Aligarh University before moving to the United States to attend Columbia and then Harvard University. It was only later that he turned his attention to painting, soon proving to be a highly gifted portraitist. As the esteemed national portrait painter of Pakistan in the 1950s, Gulgee gained several high profile commissions and his patrons included King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan. Over the course of his career, Gulgee painted dignitaries from around the world including United States presidents Jimmy Carter and George Bush Sr., as well as King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, King Hussein of Jordan and Farah Pahlavi, Empress of Iran.
After attending an exhibition of the American abstract painter and muralist Elaine Hamilton in Karachi in 1960, Gulgee’s style went through a radical transformation. The gestural dynamism he saw in Hamilton’s work appealed to him and he adapted the energy of Western action painting, reinterpreting it into a uniquely Pakistani context. Gulgee began this with abstract interpretations of Arabic script, a major contribution to calligraphic abstraction, a genre of which Sadequain and Shemza are recognized as pioneers. In the 1970s, Gulgee took his practice further, using mixed media to create sumptuously decorated canvases adorned with gold and silver leaf, mosaic like pieces of mirror and richly impastoed pools and dots of color. Often set against vibrant backgrounds, these surfaces appear like galaxies and constellations studded with stars and planets. The artist's Cosmic Hexagon Series, which is believed to comprise only three known examples including the present lot, is from this critical body of work where decoration and the materials themselves are celebrated in equal measure. Every inch of the canvas is stunningly adorned, and Gulgee’s use of a hexagon-shaped canvas, particular to this series, gives this picture an additional kaleidoscopic quality.