Dhaka-Artist Monsur came to prominence in the late ’60s. His works are exhibited regularly. As an experimental painter, he delves into figures, themes, colours and textures. His works zoom in on the struggles and yearnings of his subjects. His works employ bright and lively colours to denote the Padma River and its surrounding atmosphere. His themes include sailing boats, fishing nets, clouds, monsoon, the changing tides, erosion of riverbanks and the displacement of people.
Monsur ul Karim in his present solo exhibition is a little different. He appears in fact in several variations and he is now more experimental with form and colour.
In general Monsur is more colourful in this exhibition than he was ever before. He produces cool compositions of blues and dark greens with whitish cross bars. Some of the colour fields are flat, some are decorated with small forms and some also with dots. Some canvases are composed with bright and contrasting vertical bars; some have a combination of horizontal and vertical spaces. Quite a few of the compositions are basically abstract in nature, some with images of trees or human figures. In some works Mansur adds spaces decorated with irregular and unrecognizable form or image. This is his 26th solo painting exhibition. Monsur ul Karim was born in Rajbari district in 1950. He did his graduation from the Institute of Arts (now the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka).Later, he completed his masters in fine arts from the Chittagong University. He has recently retired as a professor from the same university. He has held over fifteen solo exhibitions. The artist received the ‘Ekushey Padak’ in 2009 and many others prestigious awards in the country and abroad. He also received Sultan Padak for his contributions to the Bangladeshi art in 2014.
