Biography
Gulgee was born in 1926 to an Ismaili family in Peshawar, Pakistan. A bright, studious young man, Gulgee received his engineering degree in 1946 from the prestigious Aligarh University, Allahabad. In 1947, upon receiving an Indian Government Scholarship, he completed his masters in hydraulics from Columbia University, New York. The following year, he earned a second masters in soil mechanics from Harvard University, Massachusetts. During this time, Gulgee developed a keen interest in drawing and painting. With his accomplished academic background in engineering, he was hired as a design engineer by a company in Stockholm, where he held his first exhibition in 1950. Gulgee returned to Pakistan in 1952 and took up a government job to work on the Warsak (Peshawar) and Mangla (Mirpur) Dams. Meanwhile, he continued artmaking and established himself as a portrait painter for elites and dignitaries.
In 1957, Gulgee was commissioned to paint a portrait of King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan during the monarch’s official visit to Pakistan. Zahir Shah was so pleased with the portrait that he invited Gulgee to work in Kabul for nine months. His work in Kabul culminated in a solo exhibition, motivating him to put an end to his engineering career and establishing him as a full-time painter. During his stay in Kabul, Gulgee started to explore unconventional materials such as mirrors, glass, and semi-precious stones like onyx, lapis lazuli, jade, agate, and marble to create mosaic portraits and landscapes. He provided the master stone cutters with outline drawings of shapes according to which various semi-precious stones were carved and pieced together to make large-sized images. Like the use of inlay in Taj Mahal, Gulgee also started using the natural shades of the stones to create the tonal variations in his work. The use of unconventional materials earned Gulgee international fame; royalty from around the world started to offer him commissions. His portfolio includes portraits of many famous dignitaries, in addition to King Zahir Shah (Afghanistan), the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, Zhou Enlai (China), US President Ronald Reagan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Pakistan), Shah Raza Shah Pahlavi (Iran), King Faisal (Saudi Arabia), Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, and Prince Sadruddin Agha Khan.
In the 1960s, the visiting American action painter Elaine Hamilton (1920–2010) profoundly inspired Gulgee, which resulted in acquiring and cultivating his sensibilities for abstract action painting. His abstract action painting developed through his experimentation with calligraphic forms. In addition to his lucrative portrait commissions, Gulgee started to render the Qur’anic verses with vibrant oil colours and dynamic brush strokes on large-scale paintings and murals. His use of bright colours, gold, and silver leaf echoes the use of such material in old manuscripts. His application of thick paint in bold colours with swooping brush strokes became the most iconic work of his later life.
Gulgee also made sculptures in bronze and gilded the spires of the Faisal Mosque, Islamabad, in gold. He was passionate about his art-making processes and always pushed the boundaries of conventional art mediums and techniques. In 2000, he established the Gulgee Museum in Karachi to provide a platform and space for promoting emerging artists and preserving fine art in Pakistan.
Gulgee held numerous exhibitions internationally in Afghanistan, Austria, Canada, France, Japan, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, the U.K., and the USA. Tragically, Ismail Gulgee and his wife, Zarine, were murdered in their Karachi home on 19 December 2007.
