The First Female Painter of Pakistan

ANNA MOLKA AHMED (Pakistani, 1917–1994)

Introduction
Anna Molka Ahmed painted the people and places of Pakistan for the fifty-five years that
she lived in this country (1939-1994). She was a very prolific and versatile artist and her work includes
landscapes, portraits, Figure studies, large figure compositions, War paintings, religious paintings,
philosophical paintings, Partition riots paintings, drawings and Sculpture.
She exercised immense influence on young artists, mainly women, by her work and by her teaching as
Head of the Department of Fine Arts in the Punjab University from 1940 to 1972 and as a Professor till
1978.
"In fact she has been the facilitator of a movement that made the proactive role of women artists a
possibility". writes Nilofur Farrukh (president of International Art Critics Association, Pakistan Section). It
is because of trendsetters like her that the feminist art in Pakistan is gaining strength away from
traditional gender discriminatory dominance. In fact, these days we are witnessing a gradual dismantling
of social and gender classifications. Well this has not been easy, since a lot of women had to struggle
hard to bring women atop many a prestigious position - above men, Ana Molka Ahmed is one such
women

Landscapes
The most distinctive contribution she has made
is in landscape painting in choice of subject and
style of painting. By precept and example, she
introduced in painting the study of the common rural scene and rural life, as against the idealized and
poetical version often painted before.

This was partly due to her down-to earth aa realistic approach to the art of painting and partly to her
attitude as a foreigner for whom even the drab and commonplace village scenes of the Punjab had an
exotic charm.

ANNA MOLKA Other Art Work

Beside painting, she was an avid gardener. She would wear her trade mark
while tending the garden, cutting hedges in new and artistic pattern, and
went on painting and gardening till the very last time until she was ordered
by the doctors to stop because it was straining her health badly.

In 1963, the Pakistani government honored Anna Molka Ahmed (1917 – 1944) with the
Tamgha-i-Imtiaz, one of the highest civilian awards of excellence. It was a series of serendipities that
led Ahmed (born Anna Molka Bridger)—a woman of Russian and Polish parentage, Jewish heritage
and born in London—to become one of Pakistan’s most acclaimed artists and educators.
The first of these was meeting a Pakistani man. While enrolled at the Royal College of Art in London,
she met her future husband and together they moved to Lahore. Eventually they separated but
Ahmed chose to stay on in Pakistan where she would go on to transform the world of art.
The next one came in 1940 when she noticed and responded to an advertisement from the
University of the Punjab seeking an artist to set up a women’s art department at the school. She was
selected and went on to establish the department and later, held the first art exhibitions in the
country. She would continue shaping the landscape of art and art education in Pakistan for the rest
of her life.
Department of Fine Art, Punjab
University, Source Lahore Museum

All this while Ahmed continued to be a prolific artist. Her work drew inspiration from her life in
Europe, her ancestral heritage and her adopted home. Her oeuvre was vast and her art depicted a
variety of subjects and themes; it not only encompassed myth and the metaphysical, but also served
as socio-political commentary.

HEAVEN
 THE HELL

Her six-panel painting titled Dance of Death is one that is striking with its gore and excess. It depicts
“a nuclear holocaust throwing the world back to the stone age” with people of seemingly different
ethnic groups at various stages of life and death, often in turmoil and struggle. On careful
observation, this frame packs much with its imagery: gore, lust, greed and ultimately, death and
destruction brought about by humans.

Google Arts and Culture

 "The day of Resurrection - Qiyamat"

Commemorating Ana Molka, the Pakistan Post issued a Rs. 4 stamp depicting Ana's
portrait and one her masterpiece paintings. Anna Molka Ahmad created a new path and a new way of
looking at objects. Her dream and passion will always serve as a guideline for emerging artists, specially
the female artists of Pakistan as an inspiration to carry for the torch she ignited decades ago.

She breathed her last in 1994.

THE END