Renowned Pakistani Artist Sadequain Naqqash was being remembered on his death anniversary today (Friday).

Sadequain was born in 1930 in Amroha, UP, India. At the age of 31, his work won recognition at the 1961 Paris Biennale.

He had a prolific career and much of his work is displayed in public places. During his life, Sadequain became a cult figure with a large following from all walks of life. The content of his work has wider appeal, and the early works addressed social evils.

In the later decades, Sadequain used the unifying spirit of calligraphy to appeal to the masses.

Sadequain was responsible for the renaissance of Islamic Calligraphy in Pakistan. He was one of the greatest calligraphers of his time who transformed the art of calligraphy into eye-catching expressionist paintings.

In Pakistan, the art of calligraphy was relegated to a second class status until Sadequain adapted this medium in the late nineteen sixties.

Sadequain also painted in bold form the poetic verses of Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz, which illustrate his love for classical literature. He belonged to the school of thought, which enriched realism with lyricism.

Sadequain wrote thousand of quartets and published them. Sadequain is the only painter who has been copied openly and widely by many painters and even the copies fetch large sums to the copiers, an irony since the artist himself hardly ever sold his works in spite of offers coming from the royals and the common public. As an example his masterpiece rendition of Sureh-e-Rehman has been copied widely by many known painters of the modern era.

The brush strokes stopped on February 10, 1987 in Karachi, when the greatest of the painters and calligraphists was just 57.

Many have imitated his work since then, but he remains to this date a very class of his own, which cannot be imitated, copied or reproduced.