Zainul Abadin

Zainul Abadin was a Bangladeshi artist born in 1914. He studied at the Government School of Art in Kolkata, India, and later became a teacher at the school.

Zainul Abadin, who began his career as an art teacher in undivided India, was jolted out of his privileged existence by the Bengal Famine of 1943–44.

Zainul’s idea of modernism was not confined to merely abstracted, non-representational styles, but to a deeper understanding of the term ‘modernity’ itself in which social progress and individual dynamism are two leading components.