Monirul Islam
Monirul Islam is a Bangladeshi-Spanish artist whose etchings and paintings have made him one of South Asia's most widely recognised printmakers.
Biography
Born in Chandpur in 1943, Monirul Islam — known widely as Monir — studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Dhaka in the late 1960s before leaving for Madrid on a scholarship. He has lived and worked between Spain and Bangladesh ever since, and both places remain legible in the work.
He is best known for intaglio printmaking, where layered textures, fine incised line, and areas of quiet colour resolve into images that stay close to abstraction without leaving the world behind. Painting and drawing have run alongside the prints throughout his career.
Islam received the Ekushey Padak, one of Bangladesh's highest civilian honours, in 1999, and in 1997 became the first non-Spanish artist recognised by the Calcografía Nacional in Madrid. Spain has since decorated him with the Order of Isabella the Catholic.
From the Collection
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