Rare works in woodcut depict Old City

Work features every day sights through ancient art form

LAHORE: An exhibition titled Five Decades of Excellence: Multi Coloured Creativity in Woodcut by Mahboob Ali, featuring rare forms of artworks in woodcut print is currently underway at Zulfi’s Art Gallery.

The artist’s work features every day sights from the old Lahore, portraits and calligraphy. The exhibition started on October 4 and remains continued till October 22.



Woodcut technique is an old art style, developed by the Chinese in 600 AD, which involves carefully cutting wood of different sizes one by one for each element or shade to create an image. The Japanese evolved the art form and later on it was mastered by German artists.

Gallery’s owner Zulfiqar Ali Zulfi says Ali is the only artist of his kind in Pakistan who has dedicated himself to the craft and has over the decades introduced new elements to the art form. He said that since it is an indirect form of painting, it requires immense amount of time and effort.

“It requires cutting wood according to tonal values of the painting, which can take months to complete. Therefore, nobody in Pakistan, has adopted this  art style full time, because along with being time and labour consuming, art buyers object to the prices of wood prints considering it as a form of simple print making, which is not the case here,” he added.



Professor at College of Art and Design, Punjab University, Dr Shaukat Mahmood said Ali is the only artist in Pakistan who has been working on wood cuts and making prints from them for the last five decades. “This is a big effort to resuscitate centuries old art that has its evolution in China and Japan.”

According to Mahmood, in the traditional wood cut prints produced are always in one colour but Ali has brought about a revolution by producing prints of nearly one hundred colours. “The process of cutting and gouging and chiselling is hard and demands labour of months, therefore it requires a lot of patience and perseverance.”

“He (Ali) is one of the artists on whom scholars studying Ph.D have written research articles,” he said. Two years ago, a student from College of Art and Design produced a full-fledged thesis on his work, which would be made available in the book form soon.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 14^th, 2017.