Bashir Ahmed

by Unicorn Gallery

Bashir Ahmed was born in 1953 and was the department head of miniature department at the National College of Arts in Lahore. A distinguished artist Professor Bashir Ahmed has been a traditional miniature artist working in the original Persian and Mughal miniature techniques and training  generations of modern miniaturists.

Book: Miniature painters, ‘Painters of Pakistan’ by S.Amjad Ali

Lahore was for centuries a flourishing centre of miniature painting. Three eminent elderly artists were working in this style in the early years of Pakistan: Ustad Haji Mohammad Sharif, Ustad Shujaullah and Ustad Aftab Ahmed Khan. They died, respectively, in 1978, 1980 and 1984.

Today four of their pupils are keeping the traditions of this art alive in Lahore. They are Bashir Ahmed who teaches this art in the National College of Art, Lahore; Khalid Saeed Butt who teaches his subject in the Punjab University Fine Arts Department, Lahore; Salahuddin, who used to work in the Lahore Museum; and Shakeel Ahmad, who practices the art privately. A fifth artist, who also works in Lahore and teaches art in the Queen Mary’s College for Women, is Munira Alam. Bashir Ahmed is the most prolific and significant artist out of all of these.

Book:Winds of change, ’Painting in Pakistan’ by Ijaz Ul Hassan

Bashir Ahmed has also undergone the discipline required of a miniature painter. He has made bolder attempts to break through the conventional format in order to express the ‘miniature’ in terms of tone and new materials rather than surface decoration.

Title: Belle in contemplation

Medium: Pencil on wasli

Size: 6 by 9