Renowned Pakistani artist, Ismail Gulgee, spoke on the creative process and his own work as an artist's tribute to God, at a lecture held at Aga Khan University (AKU) on 19 March 2003. This programme was part of AKU's Special Lecture Series (SLS) featuring talks by prominent personalities with the aim of providing students and the general public with a broad-based education to enrich their understanding and appreciation of the humanities and social sciences.
Gulgee, who has earned international recognition as a versatile and talented painter, started his career as an engineer. He completed his MS (Hydraulics) from Columbia University, and MS (Soil Mechanics) from Harvard University. Irrefutable proof of Gulgee's talent in portraiture emerged through his painting of King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan in 1957. Since then he has become known as a portrait painter par excellence; an abstract painter of the first order; a calligraphist painter and a moulder of calligraphy into free standing sculpture; a worker in stone mosaic, and an artificer of a variety of art work in metal, including the gigantic crescents that top the lofty minarets and central structures of the Faisal Mosque in Islamabad. A preference for the lustre of gold, juxtaposed with the richness of lapis lazuli have made his work recognisable through their heightened contrasts of hue and texture.
The audience glimpsed Gulgee's prolific work through the slides shown by the artist. These ranged from formal portraits of well-known personalities like His Highness the Aga Khan and Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai, to free flowing calligraphic expressions. Among the recent works shown was a mural commissioned for Lahore airport based on Iqbal's poetry. During the talk, Gulgee focused more on his calligraphic works, and the emotional and spiritual journey accompanying the creative process. He said that "I studied calligraphy till my eyes were blinded. I can write in the style of any calligrapher. But after that my heart yearned for something beyond that..I thought let me forget all the classical calligraphy and let myself go". So that "when I wrote Allah, I felt Allah in my blood, in my bones, and in my soul, and I wrote it, abandoning oneself, without a thought of what it is going to look like". He said that when writing Allah's name or an Ayat from the Holy Quran, he does not decide how it should be written; instead the outcome is left in the hands of God. He gave the example of the huge six feet disc of hardboard at the inaugural ceremony of Aga Khan University Hospital, which he painted while the Quranic verse was being recited.
It is said that a painting speaks to each individual in a different language, but this lecture provided the audience with the rare opportunity of hearing what the painting says to the artist who painted it. The audience, who gave Gulgee a standing ovation at the end of the talk, felt spiritually and emotionally uplifted by the artist's sincere passion and love for his work and all creative endeavours.
Renowned Pakistani artist, Ismail Gulgee, spoke on the creative process and his own work as an artist's tribute to God, at a lecture held at Aga Khan University (AKU) on 19 March 2003. This programme was part of AKU's Special Lecture Series (SLS) featuring talks by prominent personalities with the aim of providing students and the general public with a broad-based education to enrich their understanding and appreciation of the humanities and social sciences.
Gulgee, who has earned international recognition as a versatile and talented painter, started his career as an engineer. He completed his MS (Hydraulics) from Columbia University, and MS (Soil Mechanics) from Harvard University. Irrefutable proof of Gulgee's talent in portraiture emerged through his painting of King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan in 1957. Since then he has become known as a portrait painter par excellence; an abstract painter of the first order; a calligraphist painter and a moulder of calligraphy into free standing sculpture; a worker in stone mosaic, and an artificer of a variety of art work in metal, including the gigantic crescents that top the lofty minarets and central structures of the Faisal Mosque in Islamabad. A preference for the lustre of gold, juxtaposed with the richness of lapis lazuli have made his work recognisable through their heightened contrasts of hue and texture.
The audience glimpsed Gulgee's prolific work through the slides shown by the artist. These ranged from formal portraits of well-known personalities like His Highness the Aga Khan and Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai, to free flowing calligraphic expressions. Among the recent works shown was a mural commissioned for Lahore airport based on Iqbal's poetry. During the talk, Gulgee focused more on his calligraphic works, and the emotional and spiritual journey accompanying the creative process. He said that "I studied calligraphy till my eyes were blinded. I can write in the style of any calligrapher. But after that my heart yearned for something beyond that..I thought let me forget all the classical calligraphy and let myself go". So that "when I wrote Allah, I felt Allah in my blood, in my bones, and in my soul, and I wrote it, abandoning oneself, without a thought of what it is going to look like". He said that when writing Allah's name or an Ayat from the Holy Quran, he does not decide how it should be written; instead the outcome is left in the hands of God. He gave the example of the huge six feet disc of hardboard at the inaugural ceremony of Aga Khan University Hospital, which he painted while the Quranic verse was being recited.
It is said that a painting speaks to each individual in a different language, but this lecture provided the audience with the rare opportunity of hearing what the painting says to the artist who painted it. The audience, who gave Gulgee a standing ovation at the end of the talk, felt spiritually and emotionally uplifted by the artist's sincere passion and love for his work and all creative endeavours.
