Senior artist Professor Khalid Iqbal died in Lahore on 19th June, 2014. He was soft spoken and amicable with his students and others. Born on 23rd June 1929 at Simla, Iqbal was a legend in his lifetime. He is responsible for the creation of a whole school of landscape painters who have slowly evolved their styles under the influence of his work. According to his pupils and colleagues there is not a single landscape painter who can said that his work has not been influenced by Iqbal's work.
Artist Maqbool Ahmed was one of Iqbal's students at NCA from 1978-1982. He remembers his teacher as "an honest and devoted person to his work. He was one of the founders of National College of Arts (NCA)."
He said: "He has not a single solo exhibition to his credit; he always displayed his work in group shows."
He had been economical with his paintings; he had been economical with his exhibitions, with his palette and his painting.
Renowned artist Saeed Akhtar said: "Khalid Iqbal's death is a great loss for the art of painting in our country, especially landscape painting. He revived landscape painting and brought back its traditional touch."
Nazeer Ahmed, another student of Khalid Iqbal at NCA from 1972-1976, said, "He inspired me and will always inspire me. I cannot get out of his influence."
Iqbal, painted many excellent portraits and still life paintings in the earlier part of his long career but later he devoted himself wholly to landscape painting. He brought about a remarkable change in the principle of observation of nature and its interpretation with colours.
His special talent in this field won early recognition, and he won a prize for landscape painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, in 1954. He was a student there from 1952-1955.
This way his journey to the President's Medal of Pride of Performance (conferred in 1980) started at the Slade School of Fine Art. It was about 60 years ago. He was conferred upon the Quaid-e-Azam Award in painting in 1977.
His earlier education in art was at the Fine Arts Department of the Punjab University from where he obtained a degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1949.
He rebelled against the anecdotal and minutely descriptive style of landscape painting practiced during those days. At Slade School of Fine Art he studied realistic but a simple, austere and undecorative kind of realism and painted everyday life with cool objectivity.
On his return from London in 1955, Iqbal again joined the Fine Arts Department of the University of the Punjab as a Senior Lecturer and remained there till 1965. He joined the National College of Arts (NCA) as Associate Professor and Head of the Fine Arts Department in the same year and after almost a decade in 1974 he was promoted as the acting Principal of the NCA. He served the NCA until his retirement in 1981. He was also honoured with the Chair of Professor Emeritus in 1993 at the NCA.
Very soon after he returned from London he developed a style of his own in landscape painting, which he practiced all his life and inspired others. He brought realism to painting with impressionistic treatment of colour and light, thus creating a realistic atmosphere in his landscapes. Many of Iqbal's paintings are almost devoid of human activity and rarely contain human figures. They are purely visual world of landscapes reflecting creative, technique and passion leaving viewers in trance who enjoy and listen to great symphony of nature.
He is considered as the father of landscape painting and the initiator of modern realism in Pakistan. There is a biography titled "Khalid Iqbal - A Pioneer of Modern Realism in Pakistan" written by Dr Musarrat Hasan in 2004 for his art lovers who want to know the artist and his work.
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