Progress - Lever Brothers (1961)
Year: 1961
Format: Magazine
Illustrator: Anwar Jalal Shemza
Client: Progress (Lever Brothers)
Details: Progress was a magazine produced by Lever Brothers and then Unilever from the 1920s to the 1970s. Specially commissioned artists were used for each issue. The cover of this 1961 issue was illustrated by Anwar Jalal Shemza.
Anwar Jalal Shemza (1928-1985) was born in Simla, Kashmir, and studied at the Mayo School of Art, Lahore (now the National College of Art) from 1944 to 1947.
Shemza was renowned in Pakistan for his Mughal and Hindu-inspired figurative artworks and literary endeavours. He established his own design studio and was a founding member of the Lahore Art Circle in 1952, a group concerned with modernism and abstraction.
However, Shemza’s artistic achievements in Pakistan were not recognised when he moved to London in 1956 to study at the Slade School of Fine Art. He became disheartened when a lecturer dismissed Islamic art as purely functional. Shemza destroyed all his work and instead started exploring the modernist abstraction of Klee, Mondrian, and Kandinsky. His work began to combine ideas of abstraction with Islamic influences.
During his time in London he exhibited alongside other artists and had solo shows in the late 1950s. He married Mary Taylor, a fellow artist, in 1958. They moved to the West Midlands and he taught in Stafford. He continued developing his style in isolation from the London art scene. He exhibited internationally at drawing and print biennials until his sudden death from a heart attack in 1985.
The importance of Shemza’s work has since been recognised and his art has been exhibited widely, including shows at the Hayward Gallery and the Tate.