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lot 35

lot 35

Ismail Gulgee

Untitled

oil on canvas
34 x 44 in. (86.4 x 111.8 cm.)
painted in 2007

Winning Bid: $ 26,000

Estimate: US 15,000 - 25,000

Lot Closed

Lot Details

Signed and dated '07' (lower right)

PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

Ismail Gulgee is known for his abstract works inspired by Islamic calligraphy and gestural abstraction movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Using the confluence of abstract and gestural interpretations of Arabic and Urdu letters, he explored Islamic design elements and placed a high value on the unity and movement within his images.

"My work is the externalizations of my inner journey. Through it, I communicate with the pulse of life. The calligraphic form and movement that emerges are not premeditated or cerebral, it is intuitive and articulates something deep inside me. It is important that no thought of how people will react to my work intrudes, as they would destroy the thread and take the truth away. I am enchanted by Islamic calligraphy and feel close to the Sufi mystics. At the mystic level, barriers melt away and religious experience whether Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim become one. One could call it the human experience of the ineffable.”

Text Reference:
Annemarie Schimmel, M. Ismaili, Gulgee, Ferozesons, 2000, unpaginated

Ismail Gulgee

(1926 - 2007)
One of Pakistan’s renowned artists, Ismail Gulgee was born in Peshawar in 1926. He was a qualified engineer in the U.S.A self-taught abstract painter, Gulgee was a gifted portraitist and enjoyed regular state patronage and elite commissions throughout his career. His first exhibition was in 1950. In 1957, Afghanistan’s King Zahir Shah commissioned Gulgee to paint his portrait, and subsequently invited him to Kabul to complete another 151 portraits of members of the royal family. Gulgee received his first extended exposure to abstract expressionism in 1960 through an exhibition in Karachi of American painter Elaine Hamilton. Though Gulgee had a high public profile across the Muslim world, with works in numerous private and state collections, he exhibited infrequently at home, citing a lack of proper exhibition venues for his large-scale work. A rare solo show at Karachi’s Indus Gallery in 1988 was followed six years later by an important retrospective at the National Assembly in Islamabad. Eager to ensure his artistic legacy, in 2000, Gulgee inaugurated the Gulgee Museum near his home in Karachi. For his great contribution to the progress of art in Pakistan, he was awarded with Pride of Performance, Sitara-e-Imtiaz (twice) and Hilal-e-Imtiaz. Ismail Guljee passed away in December 2007.