Jamil Naqsh (1939-2019) Untitled (Woman with a pigeon)

Jamil Naqsh (1939-2019) Untitled (Woman with a pigeon) signed 'Jamil Naqsh' lower right oil on canvas, framed 119.2 x 90.1cm (46 15/16 x 35 1/2in). Footnotes: Provenance Property from a private collection, Pakistan; Acquired from the artists show at Tanzara Gallery in April 2018. Exhibited Tanzara Gallery, Jamil Naqsh, An Homage to the Ethereal Beauty, 19th-30th April 2018, Pakistan. Published Aasim Akhtar, Jamil Naqsh: An Homage to the Ethereal Beauty, 2018, p.37. 'An artist trained in the academic tradition, he seeks the untutored freedom experienced by the naïve and by children. Taught to render what the eye sees, he delves deep into the psyche and the subliminal. Located in the cosmopolitan, urban present, he seeks his past in the rural and the vernacular. Naqsh does not construct his figures, like a builder, into lumps of flesh, or hew them like a carver, all in a single piece. Like women crocheting apparels, he knits them into shapes - squiggle-by-squiggle - interlocked into quivering, heaving, crisscrossed surfaces. Painted into existence with almost indolent casualness, his bodies - soft, extensive, amorphous - evoke the asymmetrical forms and rhythms regulated by a myriad inner and outer sensuality collectively called 'nature.' They also seem to carry the subliminal imprint of life swaddled in the womb, of burying oneself in the abundant flesh of the female belly, of digging deep into her breasts with hands, lips and head. Most of them appear luminous and effulgent against an unnamed space - isolated and self-contained like objects floating in a dream. Seen against an airless background, the vividness of these familiar subjects - females and pigeons - assumes an ominous presence. They entice and haunt simultaneously like dreams that awaken and offer no escape... Naqsh does not stress the specificities of space and, therefore, of time or history in his work while recreating experiences. It is a theatre without props, only the female muse and the pigeons. Yet his viewers will immediately recognise that they are, as their gestures and dishabille suggest, caught in their unguarded moments.. In some works, Naqsh sets up a contrast to his figural tableaux. In the graphic tangle he uses to trap his vision of human sensuality, longings give way to an easy flowing line that embraces the motif in a voluptuous arabesque. The difference between these 'drawings' and the tableaux is not just formal. In contrast to the complex enigmas of human world, the birds and their coterie offers Naqsh a lyric vision of radiant sensuality that is simpler and wholesome.' (Aasim Akhtar, Jamil Naqsh: An Homage to the Ethereal Beauty, Karachi, 2008, p.21-25) This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: * AR * VAT on imported items at a preferential rate of 5% on Hammer Price and the prevailing rate on Buyer's Premium. AR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing