Ghalib Baqar

Ghalib Baqar was born in Karachi on April 14, 1956. At 59 years old, he is regarded as one of the finest watercolor artists in Pakistan. His first solo exhibition was held in 1983 and was inaugurated by the noted scientist, intellectual, and painter, Dr. Salimuzaman Siddiqui. In 1991, he held another solo exhibition at the Indus Art Gallery, managed by Pakistan’s leading artist, Ali Imam.

Ghalib Baqar has over 20 years of teaching experience, with seven solo exhibitions and over 100 group exhibitions to his credit. He won his first prize at the Biennial International Competition of SAARC countries in 1988. He earned his diploma in fine arts in 1975 from the Karachi School of Art, making him the youngest recipient of that diploma.

Baqar’s watercolors explore the sovereignty of the medium and its semantics, which have been naturalized in the subcontinent for 200 years and lost their colonial patina. He paints Karachi’s seaside and landscape, which emerge as codes of their geography. On his refracted surfaces are remnants of houses, land, water, boats, foliage, and the sky, with washes that fussy and frenzied displace whichever way they will. The reflections into which the surface divides and multiplies itself demonstrate the way the medium performs under the painter’s hand. What he aims to achieve is a vision that is intense yet simple, veiled by the medium but free from the ruptures of the abstract expressionist manner.