I can trace my interest in art directly back to my teenage years, and to the rich and stimulating ethos of our family home. My father was very passionate about art, oils being his favourite medium, with most of his work produced on board. His inspiration came from the 19th century impressionist movement the likes of Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir.

In the 1960’s our home had a constant traffic of luminaries from the world of literature and art that provided me an opportunity to observe and listen to their conversations from the sidelines. When I recall those years, what has stuck in my memory is the simplicity and humility of some of these icons. On many occasions I watched the great Sadequain clad in his trademark kurta and pajama perched comfortably on the floor fervently working with his marker on a sheet of paper. The first admirer of the drawing would often be the proud owner of that work. Most of the great names of the era such as Shakir Ali, Bashir Mirza, Ahmed Pervez, Zahoor Ul Akhlaque, Colin David and many more painters drew inspiration from the modern art movement of the 20th Century.

I started working as a banker in the year 1977 and would travel back from the Middle East at least once a year. On these trips back home I would always be gifted a painting from my family, most often by my brother in law, Anwar Maqsood. This was the initiation of my private art collection. In 1985 we moved from the Middle East to Miami and then to Venezuela. When our container arrived at the port of Caracas I was shocked to find it was missing many pieces from our collection, including a rare Sadequain and paintings by Jamil Naqsh, Ahmed Pervez among others. This gave me the impetus and motivation to start buying art to make my walls talk again. I tried searching flea markets in the hope of recovering some of these stolen works but to no avail. During our six years in Caracas I enjoyed visiting galleries, museums, antique shops and estate auctions. It is then I bought my first artwork, a lithograph of Latin American artist, Lucia Placios. It was the beginning of my love affair with the world of art!

In 1991, after the collapse of the bank where I worked for fifteen years, I was compelled to move back to Pakistan. In the early 90’s there were many art galleries popping up around Karachi, local emerging artists were graduating from National College of Arts and the Indus Valley School creating works inspired by the political events of the 1980’s. This was a landmark period in the contemporary art world of Pakistan; young neo-miniaturist gave a new meaning to centuries old Mughal art form. They began to show internationally and soon prominent museums, galleries, institutional and private collections globally started to acquire Pakistani art works for their inventories.

With the move back to Karachi I seriously started collecting, either buying from galleries or directly from the artist; around the same time I realized financial appreciation of art was becoming a reality in Pakistan. A new generation of collectors, mostly well-to-do professionals and nouveau riche, had started buying art, for monetary appreciation and for social cachet. Pakistani artists were bringing accolades to the country and were reviewed by critics in famous art magazines and journals around the world. With the prosperity of the late 1990s’ and early 2000’s a new generation of young professional collectors and business leaders started to emerge, thus giving an impetus to the rising art scene in Pakistan. We started seeing more notable galleries and curators surface, giving professional credibility to the art market.

The events of 9/11 and the political and geo-political milieu post this horrific event gave substance and fodder to Pakistani art to become internationally popular. Our artists started showing internationally, with museums and galleries buying their work for their permanent collections. Concurrently, price appreciation picked up pace, and a number of notable galleries cropped up in Karachi and other big cities. There are many inspiring stories of our third generation of artists making it big internationally, wining laurels and prestigious awards from museums and foundations.

I have been fortunate enough to travel the world and visit many museums and galleries in major capitals of the world. The British and Egyptian museums are among my top favorites. One can traverse back to centuries and millennia whilst enjoying how beautifully history and heritage has been catalogued and restored in these fabulous spaces. While acquiring art my emphasis is more on the thought process of the artist rather than the skill. The latter is important, no doubt, but the imagination will always supersede – at least in my view.

Our humble collection spans a period of thirty five years and covers an eclectic mix acquired during our stay and travels to Latin America, Africa, UK and countries in the subcontinent. A large portion of collected work is by Pakistani artists. There hasn’t been any method to the madness: some of the acquisitions were made purely on impulse, while for some we have given a great deal of thought. Foremost for me is that the work has to resonate with me; I would like to see and understand what is at play in the mind of the artist. In an ideal situation I would like to spend some time with the artist before I begin buying his works. I have done that with many artists and hence you will see multiple works from some of them.

Rashid Maqsood Hamidi
Karachi, Pakistan
rash.max@gmail.com