I received a text message last Tuesday from a friend, Ahmed Mushtaq, informing me that Raheel Akbar Javed had passed away on February 4. “Have you ever written on him?” I wanted to reply, ‘not really’, but was unsure. That was because I used to talk about him, to students and in print too, especially his painting The Deluge from 1974. It is an abstract canvas. I first saw it at the Lahore Museum and was mesmerised by its colours, composition and imagery. Its influence was evident in the paintings I did as an enthusiastic amateur.

Raheel Akbar Javed was not just any other artist of Pakistani origin living in the USA, working and exhibiting there. His name is associated with one of the most important art movement of this country: the Lahore Art Circle. This was a group of artists who changed the course of art. Turning away from the traditional aesthetics of AR Chughati and Allah Bux, they introduced the vocabulary of modernism. They were Shakir Ali, AJ Shemza, Ahmed Parvez, Ali Imam, Moyene Najmi, S Safdar, Kutub Sheikh and Raheel Akbar Javed, in their distinct ways experimented with new forms and ideas. Interestingly, three of these painters had literary tastes as well. Shakir Ali wrote short stories; AJ Shemza was the author of a few novels; and Raheel Akbar Javed has a collection of short stories to his credit (Ragoon Mein Andhera, published in October 1963, Lahore).

The fact that some of these early exponents of modern art were interested in literature, is significant. They were aware of the new forms of writing being practiced in the West and in Pakistan – for example Enver Sajjad’s novel Khushion Ka Baagh (Sajjad also produced works of visual arts, including his drawings for Urdu literary journals). The language of abstraction or/ and symbolic fiction (as referred in Urdu literary discourse) was the main feature/ attraction for these writers and artists in the ’60s.

However, the fiction produced by these abstract painters, unexpectedly, is not remote from reality. Elements and structure of storytelling are evident in their writings. So is a keen observation of life which shows in details of their characters, surroundings and actions in their stories/ novels. In Raheel Akbar Javed’s collection, particularly in the title story, one comes across existential issues faced by young people in a cosmopolitan society.

Like his other tales, this story dissects intricacies and complexities of human emotions to create a haunting narrative, probably made possible by Javed’s MA in psychology from the Government College, Lahore. After graduating, he served some government departments for a while but soon the creative self/ side took over. He then started showing his work on a regular basis starting with an exhibition at Alhamra Pakistan Arts Council in 1959. Later, he held several solo and group shows in Pakistan and the USA.

Raheel Akbar Javed, breathed his last in Illinois, US. Exhibitions of his work were held at several venues in the US. It is disconcerting that today in his homeland not many are familiar with the painter. For those, who may have seen his work at the Lahore Museum or the National Art Gallery Islamabad, the artist’s name does not reveal much.

Born in 1939, Raheel Akbar Javed, breathed his last in Champaign, Illinois. Exhibitions of his work were held at several venues in the USA. It is disconcerting that today in his homeland not many are familiar with the painter. For those who may have seen his work at the Lahore Museum or the National Art Gallery Islamabad, the artist’s name does not reveal much. It’s a pity, not for the departed painter, but for the history of Pakistani art, which keeps on omitting creative people, including Zainul Abedin, Qamarul Hassan and other artists from Bengal. Their presence and contribution cannot be ignored.

A monograph on Raheel Akbar Javed was published in 2002 by Sang-i-Meel Publications Lahore, which includes essays by art writers, artists, cultural critics and contemporaries, along with reproductions of his works from 1972 to 1991. These paintings and mixed media offer a view on the artist’s long association with the language of abstraction. For Javed, abstraction was not divorced from reality; one could always trace a link to life in his ‘abstract’ surfaces. The Deluge is one; it’s a superb example, because one can read it in multiple ways. A work consisting of geometrical shapes - circles, squares and rectangles; at the same instance, it can be interpreted as a depiction/ response to 1973 flood in Pakistan, with villages and small settlements surrounded by water, some drowned.

For me the second meaning is more convincing, because I still recall the newspaper headlines of devastations caused by overflowing River Indus across planes in the Punjab and Sindh. Seeing his canvas, I could connect with a couple of mud houses threatened by swarming waters; with the circle of sun suspended on top (sky) and being the only hope for survivors of flood. To a young person, who didn’t know about Raheel Akbar Javed, his literary background, his association with the Lahore Art Circle, his achievements and stature as an artist, this picture conveyed something deep and lasting. That it is possible to transform a gruesome incident into a remarkable work of art is truly amazing. Even if it is not a thing of beauty, an image of sadness can be turned into a joy forever.

I suspect that many visitors of Lahore Museum, looking at The Deluge, and not conscious of the calamity 50 years ago, see just patches of colour, forms, textures and brushstrokes that can excite as much as a regular abstract surface by any artist. This duality of appearances remained a recognisable feature in Raheel Akbar Javed, from his earlier images of Lahore: houses, alleys, domes, pedestrians; and his still-lifes with a singular vase and sparse stems, or text like doodle, or layers of sensitive textures in his mixed media – in which discernible reality is in a cohort with the pure pleasure of painterly marks.

We have kept losing our artists and it is only on receiving the news of their death that we resurrect some of them. It’s like a lot of people spent hours listening to Lata Mangeshkar after she passed away. How does an artist survive his/ her demise? The long-distance death of Raheel Akbar Javed posed this question. It’s a reminded for us to mend the fabric of Pakistani art, with its many gaps – momentarily filled with the final exit of a creative individual like Raheel Akbar Javed, a major figure of Pakistani art who had to die to be remembered and revived.

The writer is an art   critic based in Lahore.