Kazi Ghiyasuddin's 'The Work of Creation' to open at Bengal Shilpalaya

Bengal Foundation will open their newly renovated exhibition halls at Bengal Shilpalay in Dhanmondi on April 5 with the inauguration of Japan-based eminent Bangladeshi artist Kazi Ghiyasuddin's solo exhibition, The Work of Creation. The artist will showcase his life-size oil paintings and masterful watercolour works at the event.

The exhibition will be jointly inaugurated by National Professor Anisuzzaman, Sir Fazle Hasan Abed KCMG, Founder and Chairperson of BRAC, and Hiroyasu Izumi, Ambassador of Japan to Bangladesh.

The music of nature in its infinite splendour is a constant inspiration for the master painter, who captures nature's underlying harmony of colours in his arts. An illustrious career spanning over five decades, Kazi Ghiyasuddin continues to influence numerous artists of Japan and Bangladesh. His watercolour evokes the feelings of poetry while his oil delineates the magnanimity of an epic. He adeptly blends the style and taste of the East and the West to create lyrical compositions.

The two opposing characters of oil and water provide him with means to explore the connected dualities hidden within life, nature and the universe. Drawing in the viewer's senses and stimulating the innate human tendency, he creates patterns and builds stories.

Ghiyasuddin has four rare art book publications and around a hundred solo exhibitions to his credit.

He believes that merely copying nature is not creation. “I am inspired by the words of Paul Klee, who said that somebody will be a good painter, not creator. Turner's realistic watercolours are fabulous, but, I am moved by the abstract works of Paul Klee,” he says.

He was the first to receive a doctoral degree in Fine Arts from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Living between Tokyo and Dhaka, his outstanding skills have earned him a special place in both the Japanese and Bangladeshi contemporary art scenes. In 2018, Ghiyasuddin was awarded The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays, by the Emperor of Japan. The exhibition is open for all every day from 12 noon to 8 pm until May 18 at Subir Choudhury Exhibition Hall (ground floor) and Quamrul Hassan Exhibition Hall (first floor).