Legendary Pakistani artist Masood Kohari paid homage to another great artist of his time, Shakir Ali, through an art exhibition on Wednesday held at Royaat Gallery in DHA Lahore.
Kohari is currently based in France and had been a long-time close friend of Shakir Ali. He came to Pakistan to participate in Shakir’s birth centenary celebrations.
Kohari told Pakistan Today that he was invited by the Shakir Ali museum. “I knew Shakir from the 1960s. He was very friendly and helpful and an inspiration for me. He taught me how to find out my way, how to find myself,” he said.
Kohari added that Shakir Ali taught him not to be like others. “By doing these paintings I am not recreating his art work but this is just a kind of meditation. I remember Shakir by redoing the work which he had done.”
Kohari displayed 21 paintings in which he used the medium oil on canvas. His work was liked and appreciated by the attendees of the exhibition. Mian Azhar, who had come to watch the exhibition, said that the paintings were good but a single concept has been repeated.
All of them show portraits of women, they should add something new. Basically the concept of women portraits came from Europe. It is amazing but the concept is not that common in the institutions of Pakistan. Nevertheless the work is very nice. The paintings are the colours are really good and have been placed really well.
Explaining the art work, ceramist Michu Salah-Uddin said, “Shakir has also used nudism in his work. He had shown birds as sign of freedom. “
While commenting on the work, he said that such artwork is rare in Pakistan because of the cultural constraints. Our culture and heritage is a bit different and this work depicts modernism, he said.
In his work, Kohari uses mediums like oil on canvas, clay, and glass. Dividing his time between Pakistan and France, Kohari has studied and mastered the techniques of working with these diverse mediums from a range of cultural traditions such as ceramics from Punjab and glasswork techniques from Italy. His fluency in these diverse mediums has been celebrated in Pakistan and abroad.
