Miniatures in New Dimensions — exhibition featuring a variety of skilled miniature art by three artists from Lahore is being held at the Clifton Art Gallery. The featured work is intertwined by the artists’ love for the traditional roots of miniature paintings in South Asia.

The exhibition offers 22 works of master miniaturist M. F. Shahid Zaki of the National College of Arts (NCA) along with two of his apprentice’s, Anees Ahmed with 21, and Anwer Kashif with 13 paintings. The renditions by Zaki with their intricate details, offer an inspirational selection. His magnum opus is the ‘Mughal City III’ — a reconstruction of the painting originally by an unknown artist from Faizabad in 1765. The painting with the help of Kashif took the teacher-student duo nearly eight years to complete.

The painting depicting perfect details of figures measuring barely nine millimetres (mm) in length, reveals a full face, garlands, jewellery, and bangles on a close inspection.

“The Mughals had a strange philosophy of not creating every thing perfect or realistic, probably due to the religious belief that only Allah can make perfect objects. So the artists deliberately left mistakes in the works to acknowledge the imperious nature of Allah” says Zaki. “Although I have chosen to correct many of their mistakes, however, I have deliberately left errors of proportions and angles as I cannot bring myself to completely alter what I love so much and you can magnify this painting ten times and observe the detail work.”

Ahmed takes his inspiration from Zaki and follows his teacher’s footsteps in maintaining a strong tradition of Mughal miniature in his work. However, he also included the Arab oriental values of regions pertaining to the Asia Minor as couple of his works reveal strong attributions to Turkey in his painting titled ‘A Turkish Smoking P’, which shows a Turkish Semazen smoking hookah. The details of his clothes and the setting of the dancer reflect the region. The traditions grow stronger in his work ‘Ali Taimur’, which shows a prince sitting on his throne, but the patterns drawn for the painting’s border is that found in Turkish architecture in 1500s. A large section of his work on display is inspired by Abdur Rahman Chughtai — the great Pakistani artist.

On the other hand, Kashif focuses more on his figures and creates photographic and realistic miniatures and the rare impressionist heavily revolve around his figures. He tries to emulate his teacher in his own imagery and brings to fore fine detail work reminiscent of Zaki.

Mohammad Illyas, a visitor says that he would like to see more of the new art as it shifts away from the traditional one. This will help create greater awareness about the new directions art is taking, acclimatising the public to modern art, he adds.

Another visitor, Amir Alvi, who was attending an art exhibition for the very first time, appreciated the skills and determination of the artists as he found the detail inherent in the paintings phenomenal. However, he was more in awe of the realistic art pieces, which reconstructed scenes of the countless bedtimes stories narrated to us by our parents about life in the Mughal era.

Part time painter, Mohammad Arshad Khan, observed that there were some minor mistakes in the proportions in some of the works otherwise the level of detail was excellent. He hoped that in the future the public can be treated to the modern works of these artists. Dr Masood, an art buff, liked the use of the colours by the master artist and the way Anies had gone off into uncharted territory with an amalgamation of Chughtai and his own concept. However, his own preference was towards more traditional work. The painting exhibition will continue till Thursday, May 22.