Bangladeshi women artists have played a significant role in the development of art in Bangladesh, despite facing various social and cultural challenges.
This article provides an overview of the history and contributions of women artists in Bangladesh, from the colonial era to the modern period.
Unlike traditional artisan castes, such as chitrakar (painter) or malakar (garland maker), the profession of artist coincided with the colonization of the British.
In 1939 women were provided the opportunity to enroll as students in the Calcutta Government Art School and they took it with pleasure.
It must be remembered that the entrance into this new field was for women almost like an act of trespassing because it created an opportunity to encounter the public world outside the premises of the household.
The first five women admitted to this institution in the 1954–55 session were Tahera Khanam, Rowshan Ara, Hasina Ali, Jubaida Akter Khatun and Syeda Moyeena Ahsan.
It must be admitted that these women must have been very courageous and self-confident to disregard the curious gaze of society and take up the study of such an unusual subject.
It is also true that later on women who did study at art institutions did not apply their training to visibly creative activity.
She caused these revolutionary incidents to happen in Dhaka between 1956 and 1960 and possibly left for West Pakistan due to the lack of patronage.
However, the combination of the folk trend with internationalism and her clear concept of the contemporary western art world gave her the boldness to step on the threshold of many new doors.
The teachers and administration of the government art institute was still very wary of introducing sculpture in the curriculum in fear that people would begin to think that they were encouraging un-Islamic practices in a Muslim country.
This exhibition featured works in the medium of oil and tempera and the paintings showed a clear bend towards abstraction (fig.
We notice in both the cases of Novera Ahmed and Rumi Islam that they entered the world of male-centric art even though they were women.
(Full article...) The Indian Society of Oriental Art organized a number of exhibitions of her paintings in Europe but she had no shows at home during her lifetime.
[citation needed] Meherbanu Khanam (Bengali: মেহেরবানু খানম; 1885 – 3 October 1925) was an artist and noblewoman in Bengal of kashmiri ancestry.
(Full article...) Shukhalata Rao (1886–1969) was an Indian social worker, artist and children's book author.
Her father was Ramananda Chatterjee editor of the journals Prabasi, Modern Review and Bishal Bharat and her mother was Monorama Devi.
Because of her skill in needlework and alpana Rabindranath directed Nandalal to employ Shukumari as the teacher of needle art in Kala Bhavana.
Kamal Sarkar notes that her paintings executed in bright colors and bold lines are slightly decorative.
She painted scenes Devi, Child with a Doll from Krishnalila, Bhuddha's life and the poetry and stories of Rabindranath Tagore in watercolors.
She was married to the artist Satishchandra Sinha in 1920 and nearly sixteen years after that she began to practice art supervised by her husband.
Gouri Bhanja (1907–1998) was an Indian artist best known for contributing to the original illuminated Constitution of India and for dedicating several decades of her life to teaching at Kala Bhavana.
(Full article...) Indiradevi Roy Chowdhury was the daughter of Srishachandra Bhattacharya and Binodini Devi of Gopalpur, Tangail.
She received the best prize among women in the category of painting in the Indian style at the eleventh yearly exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta.
In later life she worked with Mahila Shilpa Shikshalay and Nari Sheba Shangha to develop self-reliance among impoverished women.
She was a pioneer in establishing the practice of Batik (wax resist dying) in India in modern times.
Daughter of Nandalal Bose, a central figure in modern Indian art, she was brought up in the artistic and intellectual milieu of Santiniketan and made significant contributions in the field of design.
She is the chairman and professor of the department of Drawing and Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka.
She was the first one to publicly announce herself as Birangona, a term coined by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman for the rape victims of the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971.
(Full article...) Niloofar Chaman is a Bangladeshi artist based in Chittagong, Bangladesh, whose work focuses on themes of social injustice and discrimination against women.