The first ever monograph on contemporary architectural practice in Bangladesh, dedicated to international-award-winning architect Mohammad Rafiq Azam. Rafiq Azam is a world-renowned architect. He recently received the Residential Building of the Year Award at the 2012 Emirates Glass LEAF Awards, which took place during 2012 London Design Festival. He has a holistic approach to design, which not only incorporates the elements of nature but also harnesses its beauty and potential in a practical way, in order to enhance the personal experience of a building. From his uniquely Bangladeshi perspective, the human being has two parts - the body as shell and thoughts as soul; and his architecture is similar, where the building manifests as the shell and nature as its soul. Considering the socioeconomic and city planning conditions of Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital, Azam's architectural vocabulary is kept simple and essential, with traditional spaces like the courtyard, pond, ghat (steps leading into water) and ample internal and external greenery that merge both urban and rural typologies in an intensely urban context. He arranges water courts as swimming pools in the middle of homes, arranges natural light rooms and unfolding wall systems to emphasise the interrelationship between form and void. With more than 200 colour and black-and-white plates, exquisite design sketches and aerial views, as well as watercolour paintings and inspirational phrases, this exceptionally beautiful book is a unique introduction and insight into a visionary architect and Bangladeshi contemporary living and culture.

Born in 1980 in Harbin, China, Song Yige grew up in this northeastern industrial city in the province of Heilongjiang. Quickly devoted to art as a child, she was known to forgo treats in order to buy water colours, brushes and drawing paper. Song graduated in 2007 from Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, before moving to Beijing where she currently lives and works. During her formative years she gained the patronage of artist Zeng Fanzhi. His mentorship and their creative collaboration continues and has resulted in her emergence onto the international art scene.

This first ever monograph showcases Song Yige’s first decade of painting and features her oil on canvas works. The artist’s characteristically emotional metaphors and depictions of the modern world involve everyday objects, anonymous characters, animals, and imaginary settings to create her atmospheric effects. Through fascinating large-scale and often melancholic works, Song Yige merges her childhood memories with autobiographical details to reinterpret contemporary life within the confinements of busy cityscapes. Thin layers of paint with dramatic contrasts result in a captivating glow which has already beome her signiature style. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent institutions and galleries across Asia and a recent debut show curated by Zeng Fanzhi at the Marlborough Fine Art Gallery in London, which was her first exhibition outside of Asia.

Through my work I return to my native roots, my youth, and the transitory world of innocence...The role of memory in art is a recognised fact, but in my case, as a painter living in a foreign city for so many years, my memories are doubly potent in sustaining my creative life." - Sakti Burman Legends, family, and Indian gods meet and mingle in Sakti Burman's private, kaleidoscopic universe. Sakti Burman is one of India's pioneering painters, who was born in 1935 in Kolkata and grew up in what is now Bangladesh. This monograph is the definitive publication illustrating the evolution of Sakti Burman's prolific paintings, drawings, and watercolors, contextualizing his lifelong exploration into alternative ways of seeing. Burman's colorful figures hark back to a kind of ancient "lost paradise," but also sustain a fresh and irrepressible faith in the beauty and sensibilities of Mother Nature alongside a hopeful human spirit.

The first monograph devoted to Lahore-based artist Fahd Burki, covering a decade of his works on paper.
Born in 1981 in Lahore, Pakistan, Fahd Burki graduated from the National College of Arts, Lahore, in 2003 and received a Postgraduate Diploma from the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 2010.
Over the last 10 years Burki has received much recognition and appreciation for his intriguing imagery, and awarded the 'John Jones Art on Paper Award' at Art Dubai in 2013. Burki employs acrylic, charcoal, marker pen, and collage, as well as screen printing. He frequently uses abstract graphic fields containing a central form or figure that dominates the picture plane. The artist draws inspiration from a wide range of sources, from tribal folk art to science fiction. Although his sharp-edged forms can be seen to refer to the type of icons associated with digital media, they are all painstakingly produced by hand. These often playful but also at times menacing icons and symbols are harvested from his personal mythology of the present, and are both disconcertingly familiar and completely novel.

Beautifully illustrated, this is the first volume in a world first series of volumes dedicated to the 'Contemporary Masters of Bangladesh'. Kazi Ghiyasuddin (Madaripur, Bangladesh, 1951) has been living between Bangladesh and Japan since 1975, when he took up a scholarship at the National University of Fine Arts and Music in Tokyo. He draws his inspiration from nature to project his desire for harmony and peace on richly textured canvases, which resonate with delicate, inwardly expanding applications of paint. While Ghiyasuddin has consistently displayed a refined urban sensibility which is at home in any international environment, he has put a premium value on expropriating colours, motifs and themes that typify the essential Bengali aesthetic. His early works employ bustling colours with rich tonal variations and bright visual fields. About 20 years ago, he adopted a new style. At that stage he erased his earlier canvases by painting over them with white, light grey and light blue. He is concerned as peace wanes in urbanised parts of the world and believes that nature is the ultimate destination for peace. Ghiyasuddin's genre of work is abstract, with finely sketched figures or objects on the canvas.

Beautifully illustrated, this is the first volume in the groundbreaking Great Masters of Bangladesh series of monographs. The genesis of the modern art movement in Bangladesh traces back to the partition of India (1947) and the establishment of the Dhaka Art Institute in 1948 by `Shilpacharya' Zainul Abedin and several of his contemporaries. This pioneering group included, among others, Safiuddin Ahmed, Anwarul Haque and Quamrul Hassan. Over the years, these dedicated visionaries and the institution they established have produced talented artists, many of whom have earned recognition at home and abroad. This book explores Safiuddin Ahmed's extraordinary contribution to Bangladeshi art and society, in a series of drawings, paintings, woodcuts and etchings, with more than two hundred colour plates tracing a lifetime of artistic achievements, that is virtually unknown in the West. Ahmed's works portray swirling, vigorous forms and motifs, with spectacular symbols, such as eyes, fishing nets and boats; continuously evoking the anxiety and disquiet of the times. For over sixty years, he has led the way in developing painting and printmaking in Bangladesh. Sophistication, a deep love of music, and a strong inclination to literature, is what underpins Ahmed's approach to life while his struggle for purity has always been his hallmark.

The genesis of the modern art movement in Bangladesh traces back to the partition of India (1947) and the establishment of the Dhaka Art Institute in 1948 by 'Shilpacharya' (guru of art) Zainul Abedin and several of his contemporaries, who arrived in Dhaka from Kolkata where they had trained.
This is the defining volume in the Bengal Foundation series of monographs dedicated to the great master artists of Bangladesh. Beautifully illustrated, with stunning fold outs, this book is the only comprehensive survey of Zainul Abedin's work to date, illustrating his special relationship with his country from various artistic, social, and political perspectives.
For his devotion to art education and his visionary and artistic achievements, Zainul Abedin has always been the undisputed protagonist of the Bangladeshi modern art scene. In 1943, he produced a series of renowned sketches depicting the Bengal Famine, in which millions of people perished. Abedin's haunting images brought him all-India fame. His indigenous brand of realism, coupled with his social inquiry and protest proved vital in different moments in Bangladesh's history, such as the Liberation War in 1971. Abedin did more than just make art; he wanted art to permeate all our lives. This exceptional retrospective monograph is a fitting tribute to his lifelong mission and a unique insight into Bangladeshi art and culture.