Anwar Jalal Shemza

Iftikhar Dadi, Shezad Dawood, Rachel Garfield, Courtney J. Martin, Hammad Nasar

Artist's name has variant spellings: Shimzā, Anvar Jalāl (b. July 14, 1928; d. Jan.18, 1985) Shemza, Anwar (1928-Jan. 18, 1985) Pakistani painter, printmaker, writer & teacher, active in England. Layering postwar geometric abstraction with Arabic calligraphic forms, Anwar Jalal Shemza's rich and imaginative body of work is surveyed for the first time in this comprehensive volume. Born in India in 1928, Shemza attended art school in Lahore, Pakistan, and was soon recognised there as a leading artist and literary figure. He then moved to London in the mid 1950s to study at the Slade School of Fine Art, where his art underwent fundamental transformation. His subsequent work in painting, drawing and printmaking rigorously deploys geometric and calligraphic forms to engage with dilemmas of identity, culture and place in the modern and contemporary era. Accompanying over 100 illustrations...