Where have the artists gone?
Hassan, who started to paint and sketch portraits of family members, who had passed away, as a tribute to them, began taking painting classes after migrating from Kanpur in India to Karachi. “When I was about 10 or 11 years old, I used to tag along with my maternal uncle and watch him paint the Karachi Tram. I used to wash his painting brushes,” says Hassan.
A conversation with Hassan along with two of his teachers — Seraj Ahmed and Adam Khan — brought to the fore the miserable state of art (and artists) in Pakistan. “Nobody values art here, it’s only in foreign countries that people appreciate it,” says Khan. To which Ahmed adds, “People are so unaware of art that when you sketch using pencil as the sole medium, they ask, ‘Would you colour it?’. These are the art lovers of our city.”
Further explaining why artists in the country are suffering, Khan adds, “Fraudulent people have entered the field just to make money out of this business of ours. They fetch paintings from here, tell us we are on contract for five years and sell our paintings abroad for thousands of dollars while we only get a measly amount.”