Lot 55: TENDER BURDENS - I

ANWAR SAEED (B. 1955)
TENDER BURDENS - I
signed and dated 'Anwar Saeed 2003' (lower left)
acrylic, collage, charcoal on paper
19 7/8 x 13¾ in. (50.5 x 34.9 cm.)
Executed in 2003

Acquired from Chawkandi Gallery, Karachi

PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

Regarded as one of the most profound modern day painters of Pakistan, Anwar Saeed comes from a generation of Pakistani artists whose student years were marked by the oppressive elements of the 1980s military regime. Since then, he has emerged as a painter and print maker, whose imagery evolves from complex cross-cultural sources. Christian motifs combine with Hindu, Buddhist, Greek mythologies to form a personalised language that is at once poetic and compelling. (S. Hashmi, 'The Eye Still Seeks,' Memory Metaphor Mutations: Contemporary Art of India and Pakistan, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2007, p. 26)

As seen in the present lot, Saeed often works with collage, enjoying
accidental cross-references and and strange contiguities. He paints over these textured surfaces in vibrant color, picking out images which can be woven into sexually ambivalent chronicles. On his work and symbols, Saeed states "I am interested in working with texture. The surface is very important for me. I try to build it up in layers of collage and the image develops from layer to layer. I use elements like animals, human form and other objects in relation to each other...the symbols I employ are about what is, not what should be, hence the winged figure is the realisation that the aleniation is the fate of the individual and the space enclosed in the work is an alternative of an inner space, not merely a passive reconstruction of the scene." (in correspondence with the artist)