Pervez's works inspiring but difficult to describe

The sixty-plus generation susceptible to new ideas and changes that have affected the life style of the younger generation, were seen correcting their opinion about themselves at the VM Art Gallery where Ahmed Pervez's work was on display.
The number of young painters, as compared to old and seasoned art lovers, that had turned up to the exhibition of paintings by Ahmed Pervez on Thursday, February 19, at the VM Gallery, was encouraging. All the paintings were from the collection of a renowned painter, Wahab Jaffer. Seldom at art exhibitions, people, other than collectors, come in droves. It was enough to show that in this age of fast music and fast food when people do not have time for their own selves, there were people who cared for the traditions of remembering the benefactors of social sciences, art and literature.
Art critics, some of them in their sixties, said that it was good to see young men and women taking interest in the works of old masters. They said that they were the necessary bridges between the past and the present and therefore, the future seemed to be promising.
Ahmed Pervez who was till recently a contemporary painter for many of his colleagues, now deserves to be remembered as an old master. This expression has got nothing to do with his age but the kind of maturity that his paintings had acquired during his lifetime and had bewildered many a painter, exalts him to this height. Even today his paintings are as fresh as if put on display for the first time.
Pervez had been a controversial painter as long as he lived. For example there were strong objections to his using bright colours freely and extensively, lines and strokes - looking the same - repeatedly used in different paintings and selection of media which always put him on the defensive during his lifetime, still continues to be a point of debate.
The young and promising painters who were there at the VM said that Pervez's works were inspiring but difficult to describe in simple words. "It is like a sequence of classical music played on different musical instruments."
Those who used to speak in Pervez's defence, and are still alive, have a different point of view about his work. In their opinion Pervez was a disciplined painter. He was articulate in dealing with his subjects and never permitted deviation to creep into his work and spoil the smoothness of his message.
They say that his paintings, divided into different periods, have different messages. For each message Pervez had worked on a series of paintings. In such a situation similarities in the selection of colour, strokes and lines should occur to give a definite meaning to his message and to keep it intelligible. The similarity is the indication of consistency of thought and a commitment to the completion of work.
There were 78 paintings from various collections mostly oil on canvas, mixed media, water colour and gouache on paper. Whatever was the medium, Pervez maintained a relationship between colours, strokes and the message he wanted to communicate to his audience. His works during 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s are markedly different from each other. For many art enthusiasts, as Riffat Alvi said, it was the first opportunity to trace a chronological development in the great artist's work starting from the 1950s till his last exhibition in 1979.
Ahmed Pervez in 1954 said about himself, "My paintings if they contain any art will, as in all such cases, speak for themselves. But they can only speak, whether for themselves or otherwise, to the eye and the mind that looks upon them without challenge, and with some of the tenderness with which an artist nurtures an idea, sees it grow as it were from mere vapour, and condense itself in the paint on his canvas under a hand that now trembles, now proceeds with assurance, now falters and becomes progressively firmer as an idea long-trammeled in silence, acquires a voice and a tone and meaning.
"To anyone who stops short at the notions "modern", "abstract", school of painting, etc. I wish to suggest that a kind of tussle which seems always to have been presumed to exist between the artist and his audience, may after all, be based on "mutual" misunderstanding of each others' meanings "modern", "new", "abstract", - all imply emphatically only one thing - change. A change is as odd as Time.
"I wish to emphasize that though you can choose between change and change - "change" itself, admits of no choice. Time, whatever else it may be, is change. What a conscientious artist has no option but to seek, is to try and understand its call, and follow it to the best of his ability, with step somewhat timid, but intent upon its goal."