SM Sultan
Sheikh Mohammed Sultan (
Bangla: এস এম সুলতান) (1923-1994), more well known as SM Sultan, was a painter from
Bangladesh. Sultan was born on
10 August,
1923 in Masimdia,
Narail district,
East Bengal (now
Bangladesh).
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Sultan in 1984
From http://www.mikewoodcock.com |
After only five years of schooling in Victoria Collegiate School in Narail, Sultan joined his father to work as a mason. He began to draw the buildings his father used to work on and developed an artistic disposition. He wanted to go to
Kolkata to study art, but his family did not have the means to send him there. Eventually, Sultan went to
Kolkata in
1938 with monetary support from the local
zamindar (landlord).
Having inadequate qualifications for admission into the Art School in
Kolkata, Sultan only managed to get in through the help of Shahid Suhrawardy, a member of the governing body of the School. Sultan also stayed at Suhrawardy's house and was allowed use of his library. Sultan, however, never completed his education. After three years in the school, his bohemian nature had the better of him and off he went travelling around
India and working as a freelance artist. During his travel, he made a living by drawing the portraits of allied soldiers who had camped at the place he was visiting. During this period, his first exhibition was held in
Simla, though none of these works have survived, mainly due to Sultan's own indifference towards preserving his work. After living and working in
Kashmir for a while, Sultan returned to
Narail in the wake of the
Partition of India, Narail now part of
Pakistan. A confirmed bachelor, Sultan settled down in an abandoned building in Narail overlooking the river
Chitra, where he lived ever since with an adopted family and pets of his own including dogs, mongoose and monkeys. Sultan would later build a mini-zoo near his home. Apart from occasional visits to
Dhaka, the capital, Sultan only once left Narail for any substantial period of time. He became interested in a ruined house in
Sonargaon, pretty much like his own home in Narail, and lived there for a period.
Sultan's first exhibition in Dhaka was in
1976, inordinately late for a painter of his stature.
Sultan died in
1994.
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The First Tree Planting, 1976 |
Though he changed his subject matter over the years and many of his works are in fact lost, a major theme of Sultan's work can be said to be a rendition of men and women's relation to earth. The knotting muscles of his men often recall the works of
Pieter Breughel and
Vincent Van Gogh.
Sultan often used a large canvas. His painting give the impression that his canvas is trying to capture the vastness of life and the rural landscape in which his subjects live. Farmers, agricultural labourers, fishermen, householders, and in general toiling men and women are his main subjects. As mentioned before the large muscular bodies give his paintings an enigmatic quality, because though much of the landscape comes from reality, the accentuated muscularity is in stark contrast with the often emaciated real life farmers and fishermen wasted by hard labour and hunger. It can be suggested that Sultan was perhaps painting a dream landscape though he was clearly acutely aware of the exploitation and deprivation that were the daily fare of the life of the villagers.
SM Sultan won the "Ekushey Padak" in
1982, Bangladesh Charu Shilpi Sangsad award in 1986 and the "Independence Award" in 1993. In 1989,
Tareque Masud directed a 54 minute documentary film on SM Sultan's life, called
Adam Surat (The Inner Strength). Masud started filming it in
1982 with the help of the painter, and traveled with him all around
Bangladesh with Sultan. According to Masud, Sultan agreed to cooperate only on the condition that "... rather than being the film's subject, he would act as a catalyst to reveal the film's true protagonist, the Bengali peasant". Bangladesh government recently completed the construction of
Sultan memorial complex though it hasn't yet been inaugurated. Sultan, ofcourse had a special relation with Narail. He was known to the locals as "Lal Mia", a most informal and homely name only to be given to a close person.
Chetona Theatre from Norail has staged
Aango Lal Mia (Our Lal Mia) on Sultan. In
2005, famous Bangladeshi photographer
Nasir Ali Mamun published a book named
Guru with 68 photographs of Sultan. These were selected from thousands of photographs taken by Mamun in the period from
1978, when he first met Sultan until his death.
*
Banglapedia article on SM Sultan*
Portraits by Nasir Ali Mamun
