I first met Emdadul Huq Md Matlub Ali around 2003 and found him to be a devoted cultural activist who runs a well-known cultural organization---Manab Shilpo-Shahitto-Shankrity Goshthy.
Matlub seemed to me a cerebrally and logically sound person, truly secular, a profound thinker and a Tagore expert. He is a studious and intellectually mature person. As he is passionate and a true introvert, I always observed him evading human preoccupations, publicity, media coverage and fame. Sincerity, dedication and depth of knowledge have helped him to reach his present position.
My impression of him has always been of a man who loves life and adores art, literature, music, photography, and cinema. The details of what Matlub Ali does on any given day will of course vary, depending on the time of the year.
When I first saw Matlub Ali’s paintings almost two decades ago, I was very much fascinated by his figural compositions and their proper articulations on canvas. He had truly engrossed himself with his themes. Over the years, the artist has been intensely documenting nature’s picturesque beauty as well as portraying people of his surroundings. His works express the aesthetic beauties of people and their varied moods.
At different phases of his career, Matlub’s styles can be categorised as realistic, semi-realistic, abstract expressionism, abstract impressionism, symbolism, figurative, neo-expressionism, photo realism and more. Matlub is very careful about his arrangement of figures. The painter takes considerable time to finish each piece of his work. By means of his measured and unhurried brush strokes and soft textures, the canvas/paper gets a splendid look. His lines have created a distinct language where one can learn about his perseverance, longing and devotion to art. This avant-garde painter has been associated with modern art movement in Bangladesh from its early days. A versatile individual in arts, the artist is not immersed in painting (oil and acrylic) only, but watercolour and drawing (pen) are also among his favourite mediums of expression. The charcoal, pastel and ink/pencil sketches, in particular, are very polished and captivating. His cherished study of human beings permits him to hold a distinguished position.
Matlub’s present paintings break new grounds for demonstrating open space and technical aspects. The paintings seem more concise and technically phenomenal than ever before. It is noticeable that Matlub is meticulous about using space and he superbly demonstrates texture according to the aesthetic requirement of the paintings. It is clear that his maneuvering of the colours proffered by the imaginative world is a very exciting feature in his works where there are colours present in all kinds of mind-puzzling forms.
1. Adolescence and Education
Born 1946 in a cultural family in Munshipara, Rangpur district, to father Kheraj Ali and mother Sajeda Khatun, Matlub grew up with a positive attitude towards art and culture. He completed his SSC from Rangpur Zilla School in 1963 and finished his HSC from Carmichael College, Rangpur in 1964. He completed his BFA in drawing and painting from College of Arts and Crafts, Dhaka (1964-1969) and later obtained MFA from Institute of Fine Art, University of Dhaka (1987) with the same major.
Matlub Ali involved himself as a teacher in the very beginning of his career, served in the education department of Bangladesh and University of Dhaka for more than forty years since 1970
Matlub Ali joined the Department of Drawing and Painting, College of Arts and Crafts (now the Faculty of Fine Art (FFA), University of Dhaka (DU)). He became a professor in 1999. He became the chairman of the Department of History of Art in 2011 and the Department of Sculpture in 2012. He was appointed dean of the fine arts faculty during 2010-12. He retired in 2013 as a professor of the Department of Drawing and Painting, FFA, DU.
- The Private Man and Versatile Person
Professor Matlub Ali is simultaneously an artist, a book cover designer, a lyricist, a composer, a critic, a playwright and an essayist. He has demonstrated outstanding skills in terms of creativity and other related expertise.
As a lyricist, he has written over one thousand songs for many major singers of India and Bangladesh. He has done over two hundred book cover designs. As a cover designer, his line drawings are especially unique. A reader can always tell which cover designs are his. Matlub once used to draw pictures as clear as mirror reflections. It has been comprehended that the book cover design is a significant part of publication industry.
He is an enlisted lyricist and playwright of Bangladesh Betar and Bangladesh Television. He is the first proposer of the term Tagore-art Style. Also the author and editor of a number of books of various genres including short story, poetry, lyric, essay, criticism and art etc. He plays a major contribution of seven publications on the life and works of Shilpacharya Zainul Abedin.
- Research, Experimentation and Creativity
Matlub Ali has engraved palpable marks in both his creative and research works. These marks though can be traced back to relatively fewer numbers of public expositions, are fruits of a lifetime of works. Experimentation is his forte. He is a pure experimental artist. He likes to experiment with varied mediums, shades, techniques and materials. He builds up his backdrops, colours, tones and textures in an individual mode. He also frequently searches the boundaries of expressions with diverse forms and compositions. Over the years, Matlub has developed this technique, which is very expensive and time consuming, requiring immense effort and devotion. He has used nature’s colour as his principal source for motifs and forms. The delicacy of his lines, forms and colours are derived from the natural world and have evolved from a more traditional style to abstractions that intensify panoramic views and imagination.
- Thematic and Symbolic Painter
He has been gradually transformed himself into a realist, figurative and abstract expressionist painter. His works are figure and composition based, colour-oriented and nature is a recurring leitmotif in his paintings. Many of his paintings help him to consider as a symbolic painter. He has always enjoyed creating new forms and shapes that represented unfamiliar and unconventional facets.
Throughout his illustrious career, he has worked on varied themes, portraying them in his personal style and technique. His themes have always been closely connected to the soil of Bengal and its people. Many of his works delve deep into pure abstraction. The themes emerge in his works symbolically and at times according to his paintings’ characters.
Matlub Ali has a strong control over drawings by means of ink, pen, pencil or charcoal. He has done lots of drawings in different spans of time in his life. His drawings demonstrate many aspects of human life, social, cultural, political and economic life of a society. In his portrait sketches (watercolour), the artist is profoundly true to the characters. He does figurative work -- rural men and women in varied moods, street children, working class people, boats, crows, indigenous people, flowers, people at leisure and much more. His landscapes transport the viewers far away from the hectic urban life. He has set the motifs in different combinations of light and shade.
- Portraitures and Faces
Painting portraits is considered to be one of the oldest forms of art. From ancient times this art form has been predominantly used to glorify the influential and powerful in the society. Sometimes, Matlub portrays characters, which have no existence in the real world, play in his subconscious mind, and through which one gets a touch of trianglism. He paints figures and portraits from different perspectives and with varied modes of expression. Sensual figures, figures in a contemplative mood, figures in close proximity as well as their affections, longings, yearnings, conflicts and movements are noticeable in his works. Matlub brings in romanticism to his portraits as well. He tries to synchronise colours, textures and formation of visages.
- The Humanist and Socially Conscious Painter
His artworks interpret the feelings and perception of a philosopher as well as bear traditional, historical and anthropological dimensions. The painter has transformed himself over the period through dealing with contemporary issues. He closely observes a character, goes into details and makes an attempt to highlight characters' temperament and disposition. In the course of his career, he has developed several styles, particularly in his drawings and sketches. He intimately detects the country’s changing socio-political and economic conditions. Many of his artworks’ disclose life’s elation, thrill, vibration, depression, peace and other poetic aspects of human life.
Noted Indian art critic Shovon Som said, “Professor Matlub Ali’s pictorial diary of trips from Dhaka via Kolkata to Delhi and back evinces fine draftsmanship and a lively sensitivity. His pen has captured many small details that we tend to overlook, and given lasting form to many fugitive sights. Even the idea of such a pictorial record is novel.”
When Matlub gets immersed with his paintings, he loses himself. He is recognised for nurturing enough gallantry to destroy his labourious productions if he finds them unsatisfactory and therefore he creates a new pattern, as the world of painting surrounds him from all possible dimensions. He most certainly does not seem to relent and on the contrary cannot help but breathe life into each painting. In this very way Matlub applies colours and creates forms, lines and compositions. He puts layers upon layers of paint and draws forms and objects continuously, until he feels that he has achieved what he has been striving for. The outcome is a contemplative, subtly balanced arrangement of colours and space that does not fail to draw an art enthusiast’s eyes.
Matlub Ali is simultaneously workaholic and scholarly sound. Over the course of years, he has been doggedly experimenting. He gives a precise explanation to his forms and compositions which make a new meaning for his paintings. He always provides a new look for each of his expositions. The painter is always driven to explore something novel. It breaks boredom for him and he believes art can be enriched through experimentation.
- The Individual and Advanced Personality
Matlub’s figures have been time-consuming to draw and their facial expressions carry sundry moods. Many of his paintings seem to us outstanding and make us contemplate largely due to his acute seriousness and honesty towards his works. A workaholic and perseverance in character, the painter spends considerable time to go into details of the subjects and he never hankers after wealth and cheap popularity.
To start with a concise outline of Matlub Ali the first thing one has to bear in mind is that the artist is a prodigious wizard of the colourful world. He often seems consciously or unconsciously keen to inculcate sensuous relief to the sight. As it will be followed shortly that he does not reserve his artistic insight only for the creme de la crème, it should be mentioned that he does not resolve to be an urban misogynist either. His works on urban progression does not necessarily deem to be radical. But far more striking than his civil works if not the most of all others are his abstract and semi abstract delineations. These works sometimes with concrete figures sometimes with abstract figures, sometimes with sharp edges sometimes with softer ones do not stand out as the artist’s insistence on being uninterpretable. Rather he focuses on imparting aesthetic pleasure. Delivering hard to encrypt messages does not seem to be his mission as many of his works involve both decipherable and peculiar yet evocative compositions.
- The Cultural Activist
Matlub Ali is an accomplished cultural activist. He has been actively involved in virtually all cultural movements during the pre-Liberation and post-Liberation War years. A former dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka, he helped nourish the cultural aspect of the independence movement.
Matlub always feels that cultural activism in the pre-Liberation era began with the Language Movement. Pakistan was created based on religious identity. However, Bengali Muslims soon realised that they have a unique linguistic and cultural identity. In the ‘60s and mid-60s that self-rediscovery resulted in a unique cultural movement. Cultural uprising ran parallel to political protests. When Matlub Ali was a student of Dacca Charukala, he involved himself with all the cultural and social movements.
In 1967, Pahela Baishakh (Bangla New Year) was celebrated on a mass scale at Ramna Park. Chhayanaut arranged the event. Matlub has been with Chhayanaut ever since. As the nationalist movements gained momentum, each year the turnout at the Pahela Baishakh celebration grew. University students formed a cultural group called “Shangskriti Shangshad.” Many noted cultural and media personalities of the country were members of that group. The cultural movement brought everyone together when, in 1967, the Pakistani information minister banned the performance of Rabindra Sangeet on the state-run radio. On Tagore’s death anniversary, leading artistes held a programme disregarding the ban.
Matlub always sacrificed his time and thoughts for the welfare of the country. He dedicates his labour and intelligence whenever the society falls into a crisis. Matlub and his colleagues desperately took part in the mass processions of the 1990s. The 1990 mass uprising was a democratic movement that took place in December and led to the downfall of General Ershad. The uprising was the result of a series of popular protests that started in October 1990 to topple General Ershad who had come to power in 1982 by imposing martial law.
About a hundred people died during the protests that culminated in the upsurge from 10 October till 4 December (1990). Street fights started on 27 November after a state of emergency was declared. Ershad was arrested immediately after his ouster on corruption charges.
The uprising is marked as the starting point of parliamentary democracy in Bangladesh after nearly fifteen years of military rule and paved the way for a credible election in 1991.
- Achievements, Exhibitions and Collections
Matlub Ali has received many prestigious awards for his outstanding contributions to Bangladeshi art, music and writings in his checquered career. He received Agrani Bank Children Literature Award in 1985, Radio-Drama Competition Award in 1996, Zainul Abedin Smriti Parishad Sammanana in 2004 for research on Shilpacharya Zainul Abedin, Rangpur Shahitta Parishad Sammanana in 2008, Zainul Abedin Smriti Parishad Sammanana in 2012 and Zainul Sammanna in 2022.
Matlub Ali’s first solo exhibition was held in 1968 at Rangpur Press Club, Rangpur; the second solo exhibition was held in 1985 at College of Arts and Crafts, Dhaka; the third solo exhibition in 1995 at Bangladesh National Museum, Dhaka; the fourth one in 2005 at Zainul Gallery, Institute of Fine Art (now the Faculty of Fine Art, University of Dhaka); the fifth show in 2008 at Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata, India; sixth solo in 2012 at Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka; seventh solo in 2013 at the New York Art Collection, NY, USA; eighth solo in 2013 at Bangladesh Embassy, Washington DC, USA; ninth solo show in 2015 at State University of Bangladesh, Dhaka and tenth solo exhibition in 2016 at Woodside, NY, USA. He has also participated in many national and international group shows at home and abroad.
Matlub Ali’s paintings are being displayed at many places like Bangladesh National Museum, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka University Central Library, Bangladesh Bank headquarters, One Bank headquarters, Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts, Delta-Brac Housing Finance Corporation Ltd head office, Bangladesh State University, Bangladesh Embassy, Washington DC, USA and in many other private collections at home and abroad.
