Colin David: A master of contemporary art - By Marjorie Husain

On Monday, the 25th of February 2008, Pakistan lost a distinguished and revered artist. The world of art joins his family in mourning a great and gentle soul who will continue to live through his work for all time to come.

The country�s outstanding contemporary painter, Colin David, was an artist who understood the modern idiom in art. The sense of spatial harmony, brilliant use of colour and the contrapuntal element that balanced his work created paintings of rare and masterly quality. He was a superb draughtsman, an artist who endowed his work with a technical perfection that is all too rare.

Born in Karachi in 1937, Colin David began his art education at the Punjab University, Lahore, when the Fine Arts Department opened its doors to male students in 1956. After taking his MFA from the Punjab University Fine Arts Department in 1961, Colin was awarded a scholarship for post-graduate studies at the Slade School of Art, London. There he was guided by Sir William Coldstream, an artist who painted in the celebrated method of the �Euston Road� group. Like Khalid Iqbal before him, Colin admired Coldstream�s viewpoint involving the `reality rather than the impression� of a subject. At the Slade School, for the first time Colin David had the opportunity to paint from life, and found his artistic m�tier.

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