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Jamal Ahmed is one of the major exponents of realism with a penchant for portraying communities living by the rivers and the Bay of Bengal. Born in 1955 in the city of Dhaka, he graduated in 1978 from the College of Arts and Crafts, now Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka. From 1980 to 1982, he completed a two-year research course at the Academy of Fine Art in Warsaw, Poland. Later he moved to Japan and studied oil painting at the University of Tsukuba and earned his post-graduation degree in 1986. Known for his dexterous handling of brush and colour in translating familiar scenes into powerful images, Jamal soon took to painting the models representing rural Bangladesh. He has become well known for his pictorial technique that applies sweeps of colours and textured areas against which he develops his humans and birds using an off-hand naturalism that lends his works a quality of their own. If his realistic rendition of pigeons and horses have made him popular, his gypsies, fishermen, and the troubadours have secured him a place among the greats of Bangladeshi art. His prolificity has earned him numerous accolades, including the Grand Prize at the 11th National Art Exhibition at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy in 1994; the Grand Prize at the 14th National Art Exhibition at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy in 2000; the 2nd Best Prize at Artist’s Association Exhibition in 2000; an Honorable Mention at the 10th Asian Art Biennale at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy in 2001. He currently serves as a professor at the Department of Drawing and Painting at the Faculty of Fine Art. He received the Ekushey Padak, the second highest civilian award in Bangladesh, in 2020. |
