When Zubeida Agha held her solo exhibition in Karachi in 1949, artist Fyzee Rahamin’s wife, Atiya Fyzee, condemned it as an “addled type of art” and in an outburst added that Zubaida Agha’s type of modern art could only be “seen in asylums”.

Atiya’s reaction to modern art was not extraordinary; it was just outdated by about three decades. She didn’t realise that Agha, in the modernist mode, had rejected realism and decided to paint the analysis and interpretation of reality rather than its faithful representation and was steeped in the Aristotelian consideration of depicting not what was but what was possible.

Agha’s bold colours and abstract, organic forms were manifestations of the phenomenology of modern life. To be so definitive in innovation required a daring spirit, unconcerned by external opinion, which was all of Zubeida Agha.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, March 29th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play