Ijaz ul Hassan

Ijaz ul Hassan studied at Aitchison College and later read English for his Master’s Degree at Government College Lahore and St. John’s College, Cambridge. He studied painting at Fine Arts Department, Punjab University and St. Martin’s School of Art, London. Ijaz is recipient of the President’s award for Pride of Performance, the highest national award in the field of art.

Ijaz ul Hassan is one of Pakistan’s outstanding artists and a leader of a group of painters who identify themselves with their surroundings. His work of the seventies established a new trend in Pakistan Paintings. In the early period, he employed popular images clipped from print media, posters and cinema hoardings. Later, these were used to express larger social concerns. Ijaz not merely painted, but lived the times for which he was on several occasions apprehended and incarcerated. Many of the works of the period were censored and removed from exhibitions. Canvas Gallery Karachi recently held a retrospective show declassifying some of the works that have remained concealed from public view.

In 1977 during Gen. Zia ul Haq's Martial Law, Ijaz ul Hassan was one of the first activists to be arrested and put in solitary confinement at the infamous Lahore Fort. During this period, when every form of dissent was crushed, Ijaz tried to have his thoughts and feelings known to the viewers with images and symbols; many derived from nature.

One of the images established was that of a window through which you look from lonely confinement to sunny prospects. This image he evolved peering through the bars of his cell in which he was incarcerated at Naukhar. He also invented a series based in a vine girdling a tree. The entwining vine conveyed the feeling of togetherness and fulfilment. In a different vein, his painting flaunting lilies express manifold ideas and feelings ranging from pain to joy.

Ijaz ul hassan takes special pleasure in painting trees that have matured and acquired striking individual identity. Most of these images symbolize human struggle and growth. He also takes pain to record the phenomenon of life and death; things coming into being and others perishing into oblivion; sombre prospects being suddenly invaded by sun shine, silhouetted leaves ignited and dark lilies set ablaze by stray rays if light; a Laburnum transforming from spectre of death to spectacle of life and so on. Ijaz is thrilled to draw strength from the regenerating force of nature – where an axe falls on a limb, several shoots must grow next season.

Ijaz ul Hassan writes regularly for national newspapers and international journals. He is author of Painting in Pakistan published in 1990. He is an open candid person but as a painter he is restrained in dilating on the merit of his achievements. He has had seven solo exhibitions, but in the course of almost five decades he has produced extensive body of work including large murals.

Note: His work can be viewed at ijazulhassan.com.pk.

Read his Exclusive and most recent Interview in Urdu at http://www.awamijamhoriforum.org/40thissue/mian_ejaz_1.html