Having recently entered the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, Head, 1957 by Anwar Jalal Shemza, is currently on view in Room 29, forming a key part of a new display dedicated to self-portraiture across the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection.
Created shortly after Shemza moved from Pakistan to England in 1956, 'Head' marks a pivotal moment in the development of his practice. Part of an elegant series of heads made between 1956–57, the work signals his departure from an earlier illustrative style towards abstraction and the development of a new visual language shaped through the double prism of Islamic and European aesthetics.
Adapting the human subject, Shemza explores colour, surface, geometry and spatial interplay, while his use of pattern, line and repeated forms reflects his growing engagement with European modernism, particularly the work of Paul Klee.
These early experiments would lay the foundations for the distinctive formal vocabulary Shemza developed over the following decades, drawing together influences including Mughal architecture, Arabic calligraphy and carpet patterns.
