Ahmed Parvez (Pakistan, 1926-1979)


Self Portrait (1974) Gouache on board 60.5 x 40.5cm (23 13/16 x 15 15/16in).
|Provenance:From the Collection of Mustansar Hussain Tarar, acquired from a friend of the artist in the 1980s.Published:Akbar Naqvi, Image and Identity: Fifty years of Painting and Sculpture in Pakistan, Karachi, 1998, p.303Ahmed Parvez, along with friend Ali Imam, was a devoted student of Shakir Ali. '[Shakir Ali] insisted upon free painting as the only method of painting...(because)... he believed that the individuality of the painter can be expressed better in free painting. The challenge, as Shakir saw it, was to find one's own individual style or subjectivity in art; Ahmed Parvez understood this challenge and, at a tangent from his mentor, found himself a different style with his confidence in himself, there was no question of apparent insecurity, but, his art was the expression of self-aggrandizement of a broken man.' (A. Naqvi, Image and Identity: Fifty years of Painting and Sculpture in Pakistan, Karachi, 1998, p.302)Ahmed Parvez's relationships with his teachers and his peers was often volatile and fraught. Such was his inner mental angst that it manifested in explosive ways often severing relationships with his closest friends. Upon separating form his third wife, Ahmed Parvez, painted a self portrait, the present lot. In this work he depicts himself as a smartly dressed wolf man. It is the only known self portrait and only work of this anomalous series.This deeply personal and intimate work is a rare example of Ahmed Parvez, the man. The image leaves him vulnerable and exposed and he is no longer able to hide behind his aggressive temper and volatile behaviour. No longer obscured by arrogance or the bravado of his colourful explosive renditions of still life, Ahmed Parvez is staring into what he perceives to be the very worst of himself.