Art is the way of living for the people of its 68,000 villages, where housewives are busy making Nakshikantha, Pankha(hand fan), pillow covers, handkerchiefs, wall hangings, TepaPutul (doll), Nakshipitha (decorated food item), bed covers, and much more. Even the walls of the houses are painted and decorated in vibrant colors. And then there is the Alpana art, or ritual painting – motifs painted on
the floors of the homes. Urban Bangladesh thrives on art too, with its colorful trucks, buses, auto-rickshaws, and especially the art done on cycle-rickshaws that has gained quite a lot of attention in the recent times. One could go on and on about how vast the scope of art is in Bangladesh . In fact, each and every object that is used in daily life represents the art of Bangladesh . However, this article will focus on art that is practiced and applied within an academic scope in the urban society of Bangladesh . The first sources of fine arts belonging to Bengal or Bangladesh are still unexplored, although during one of its golden eras, the Paal paintings (Puthichitra), from around the eleventh century, reflected great aesthetic finesse. It is also evident in aristocratic glory that shines through the engraved terra-cotta work done on different architecture like Tombs, Temples or Mosques during the reign of Buddhists as well the during the Mughal Empire. Apart from terracotta, other forms of art such as the designs done on fabrics like Muslin and Jamdani, paintings on SARA, POTCHITRA and NOKSHIKATHA as well as various forms of embroidery have been handed down through thousand of years of artistic evolution in Bangladesh . by Najib Tareque
(Translated from Bangla by Ahmed Badoll & Mithila Mahfuz.)
