he death of Mansur Rahi was not as widely or visibly mourned as his artistic eminence deserved. The painter passed away on May 12. However, the news was hardly seen except in a few posts on social media. There was not even a regulation story about this eminent Pakistani painter in a newspaper, nor was it reported on many TV channels.

The news was carried by Pakistan Television, which in the past had broadcast a programme hosted by the painter giving drawing and painting lessons to millions of people across the country, during a period prior to private/ parallel channels, YouTube and Google; and before SMS and WhatsApp messages. Even the super active and alert Pakistani art world was by and large ignorant of its loss on a hot summer day in Islamabad.

One wonders whether the information about Mansur Rahi’ demise appeared in the press, social media or art circles in Bangladesh, the country of his origin, and the land of his teacher and mentor, Zeinul Abedien. If it went unnoticed there, it might be seems because Rahi had chosen to stay in Pakistan, even though a large number of Bengalis decided to return to Bangladesh after 1971. Some people still find Rahi’s preference for Pakistan puzzling. One reason could be his marriage to Hajra Mansur; another, his attachment to the Karachi School of Art (founded by his sister in law, Rabia Zuberi in1964); yet another, his success in Karachi prior to his move to Islamabad, where he had a studio and gave art classes on a regular basis.

It is rare for a professional to opt to remain the citizen of a country hated by many who share his language, racial roots and common culture. Rahi realised that his association with Pakistan was bad for his reputation in his motherland. Another painter from Bengal, Murtaja Baseer, suffered a loss of reputation in Bangladesh because he had had a few exhibitions in West Pakistan before 1971. But Mansur Rahi continued to speak with a peculiar (Bangla) accent in a country populated by a majority of other ethnicities – both in his language and his art.

Rahi was the recipient of a lot of praise and a few national exhibition prizes in Pakistan, but more than the state awards or art prizes, it was the recognition of his prominent painting style that distinguished him from his contemporaries in Pakistan. Everyone (including the artist) called him a cubist painter. This reminds one of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who once stated: “We sometimes demand definitions for the sake not of the content, but of their form. Our requirement is a kind of ornamental coping that supports nothing.”

Actually, Rahi was the heir to a legacy of Bangla artists, who practiced non-representational imagery (like Amin-ul Islam and Hameed-ur Rehman) although these artists and Mansur Rahi were not pure abstract painters - because one finds traces of reality entangled in their large sweeps of colours. Rahi added a poetic element to harsh, geometric and repeated shapes and lines – generally identified with Cubism. I recall seeing a painting of his reproduced in a calendar of Pakistani artists, and being bewitched by its smooth, soft and sensitive variations of tones and shades. The subtlety of composition was accentuated by a couple of floating marks here and there, often suggesting limbs, hooves and outlines of animals.

The lyricism achieved in the work from that period, in which the recognisable form, or an identity such as Cubism was pushed back in favour of an aesthetic of abstraction, seems to be his best period from a huge oeuvre. With variations in scales, treatment, figures and media, Rahi kept on producing and showing artworks at various galleries of Pakistan, along with numerous group shows locally and abroad.

I met the maestro only once in 1997 at his studio in Islamabad. The most cordial and welcoming artist was surrounded by his canvases. He was kind enough to share these with an unknown enthusiast. The paintings represented his evolving and changing vocabulary, and testified to his discipline to produce consistently.

A question that often circulates the world of art and was stirred again on his death concerns the painter’s drift from fame to oblivion. Although Mansur Rahi remained a known figure in the country, mainly due to his art lessons on TV, he ended up being a peripheral person in the later part of his long life (1939-2024). Born in West Bengal, the artist had graduated from Government College of Art and Craft, Dhaka. He had held his first exhibition in 1957. He showed extensively in Dhaka, Tokyo, Karachi, Peshawar and Rawalpindi. Mansur Rahi also won several awards for his work including First Prize at Government College of Arts and Crafts, Dhaka (1961), PNCA (1969 and 1987) and Shakir Ali Award, Biennale PNCA.

Along with these awards, a monograph was published on his art and life. It documents works from various phases, which the artist, in a catalogue of his solo exhibition from 2007, proudly pronounced as “Cubical fractionism, Analytic Cubism, Cubical rayonistic formalism, Neo-cubo-precisionism and Neo-cubical Romanticism.” For me the painting I saw on that old calendar was the best introduction to Mansur Rahi. It hugely influenced a beginner’s experiments in image-making.

The news of Mansur sahib’s death was a personal loss for me. It was also an occasion to reflect upon his gradual disappearance from the active art scene, much before his physical exit. It was arguably a result of stagnation in his art and the failure of his attempts at resurrecting his early success. Another factor may have been his decision to live in Islamabad. Unlike Lahore, Karachi or Quetta, the federal capital is not known for the permanent presence of major artists.

While some young graduates emerge every year from the National College of Arts, Rawalpindi Campus and departments of art in some other universities in the twin cities and a few galleries hold frequent exhibitions, Mansur Rahi was the sole major painter residing in the metropolis. The lack of interaction, even comparison with people of similar stature may have stunted his perpetual growth.

In that sense Mansur Rahi was not the only artist suffering from the fatal solitude. One can cite a number of other creative persons who have been producing works that are essentially the repetition or regression of their earlier brilliance. This is a sad realisation; a lone voice is a lost voice.

The writer is an art critic, curator and a professor at the School of Visual Arts and Design at Beaconhouse National University, Lahore