Zahoor ul Akhlaq

Zahoor ul Akhlaq (4 February 1941 – 18 January 1999) was a pioneering artist from Pakistan.

He is known for his approach to painting, sculpture, design and architecture, as well as his teaching at the NCA (National College of Arts) in Lahore.

Born in Delhi, India in 1941, he was the eldest in a family of 11 children.

His family moved to Lahore after the independence of Pakistan in 1947, eventually settling in Karachi, Pakistan.

Akhlaq attended the Sindh Madrassah (now called Sindh Madressatul Islam University) as a young boy and went to study art in Lahore at the Mayo School of Arts (now called National College of Arts) back in 1958.

Pakistani painter Shakir Ali was teaching art there as a professor back then.

Shakir Ali encouraged him greatly in his art studies.

Zahoor graduated from this college in 1962 and he then started teaching at the same college in the Fine Arts Department.

Shakir Ali heavily influenced him to learn the Cubist style and other modern ideas of that time.

In 1971, he married Sheherezade Alam, a potter, and the couple had two daughters, Jahanara (1974–1999) and Nurjahan (born 1979).

In 1981, he designed 2 of a set of 5 stamps issued to mark the Third Islamic Summit Conference at Makkah, Saudi Arabia.

Both designs (40 paisas and Re 1) depicted an Afghan refugee girl.

An art gallery at the National College of Arts, Lahore is named in his memory as is the gallery at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi.

Akhlaq, and his elder daughter, Jahanara, were shot dead in their Lahore home on 18 January 1999, by a visiting acquaintance, Shahzad Butt, a roti merchant of the city.

The killer could give no reason for having turned his gun on them.

Akhlaq's painting invoked a dialogue between modernist abstraction and many traditional forms and practices found within South Asia (including Mughal Miniature painting, calligraphy and vernacular architecture).

At a time when his contemporaries in South Asia were developing their work within a modernist tradition, or had primitivist leanings, he eschewed both schools by merging his interest in abstractions with traditional and vernacular practices.

Although he evaded the label of an abstract artist, his work mostly fits this definition.

Akhlaq's influences are from a vast range of sources, which include painting, literature, philosophy, Sufism, dance, and music.

His teaching and practice is considered to have had a significant impact on a generation of Contemporary Pakistani art and artists.

Zahoor ul Akhlaq is best known for pioneering the contemporary miniature painting in Pakistan.

Zahoor ul Akhlaq played an important role in the establishment of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in Karachi.

The logo of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture was designed by him.

On 14 August 2006, Pakistan Post issued a Rs.

40 sheetlet to posthumously honour 10 Pakistani Painters.

Besides Zahoor ul Akhlaq, the other 9 painters are: Laila Shahzada, Askari Mian Irani, Sadequain, Ali Imam, Shakir Ali, Anna Molka Ahmed, Zubeida Agha, Ahmed Pervez and Bashir Mirza.