Ahmed Parvez (Pakistan, 1926-1979)


Beer Jug Signed 'Parvez' and dated '77 lower left Oil on canvas 75 x 59.5cm (29 1/2 x 23 7/16in).
|Provenance:From the collection of Rukhsana and Ahmed Hamidi;Thence by descent.At age 26, Ahmed Parvez, moved from Karachi to Lahore and developed his skills under the guidance of teacher, Shakir Ali. In Karachi he had been working at his uncle, Jacobus Michael's studio, but grew tired of the voluptuous nudes favoured there. Ahmed Parvez credited much of his flourishing as an artist to the influence of Shakir Ali stating that 'in the early fifties I learnt the language of abstract art from Shakir Ali' (Akbar Naqvi, Image and Identity: Fifty years of Painting and Sculpture in Pakistan , Karachi, 1998, p. 282) His friend and mentor Ali Imam was also a key figure in his creative prosperity despite their sometimes tempestuous relationship. Part of the Lahore Art Circle, Ahmed Parvez travelled to England to expand his artistic exposure, like Shemza and Ali Imam. For some years he struggled in England, his work typecast as musings from the Muslim third world. However after some years Parvez held a successful exhibition at New Vision Gallery. Whilst in London Ahmed Parvez scaled down his work to small, affordable watercolours and pastels. He did not at that time have the resources for works at a greater scale and this financial concern allowed for an intricacy not often afforded by those working on a larger scale."The style in which he painted was not automatic but instinctive; it was not ideologically programmed but was a series of urges which could be consummated in the medium." 
(Akbar Naqvi, Image and Identity: Fifty years of Painting and Sculpture in Pakistan, Karachi, 1998, p. 304) It was the emotive quality of his works not the size that made Parvez stand out from his peers. He continued to work in England, marrying and settling there until 1964, when he returned alone to Pakistan. His brilliance was also his curse, the dynamic impassioned strokes in his work echo the fervour in which he loved and loathed and it was this that often drove him away from his closest friends. His premature death alone in a shabby flat in Karachi in 1979 was all the more saddening as he was someone described as a touchstone of modern art in Pakistan.