Best of Royaat Gallery: Rural landscapes, local flora and fauna on display

Exhibition featuring works by past masters and rising stars runs till Nov 7.

LAHORE:

Rural landscapes and indigenous trees and birds were prominent at an exhibition on Saturday of the best works ever to go on display at Royaat Art Gallery.

Forty one pieces by 24 Pakistani artists, including renowned maestros and rising stars, were on display at the Best of Royaat exhibition.

“We have introduced some great landscape painters in the past decade as well as displayed the works of highly acclaimed artists such as Gulgee, Saeed Akhtar, Allah Bux and Sadequain. All of these artists have contributed in making this gallery special,” said Feryal Latif, who has run the gallery in DHA for the last 12 years.

Latif said the works of the legendary artists had been taken from the gallery’s permanent exhibit. Most of the contemporary artists contributed their latest pieces for the exhibition. The works were priced between Rs20,000 and Rs2.5 million, the price of Gulgee’s Looking Glass.

Four pieces by landscape painter Muhammad Arshad, who was displaying work at the gallery for the fifth time, were well received for his drawing skill and use of colours. He said it was “overwhelming” to see his work up alongside that of legendary Pakistani artists. “It is an achievement in itself,” he said.

Arshad, 34, said the works of Kaleem Khan, an artist known for landscapes of rural Baluchistan, and Rahat Naveed Masud were his favourites at the exhibit.

“The texture of acrylics in Khan Sahib’s works are matched only by his brilliant observational skills. It cannot get any better,” said Arshad.

He said that Masud, the principal of the College of Art and Design at Punjab University, was great at painting still life. The exhibition included figurative pieces by Colin David and landscapes by Ustad Allah Bux, Mian Ijazul Hassan, Ghulam Mustafa and Nyla Amir. Situations, a set of sculptures by Jamal Khan, and monochrome installations by Nahid Raza, were also on display.

The exhibition will run till November 7.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 11^th, 2012.