Novera Ahmed

Novera Ahmed (29 March 1939 – 5 May 2015) was a modern sculptor of Bangladesh. She was awarded Ekushey Padak by the Government of Bangladesh in 1997. Artist Zainul Abedin described her work saying "What Novera is doing now will take us a long time to understand – she is that kind of an artist.".

Early life and education
Novera Ahmed was born on 29 March 1939, in Bangladesh. Her ancestral home was in Chittagong. Ahmed studied in Calcutta and Comilla. In 1955 she was awarded a Diploma in Design in the Modeling and Sculpture course from Camberwell College of Arts in London. At Camberwell she studied under the British sculptor Jacob Epstein and Karel Vogel of Czechoslovakia. In 1966, she met Danish artist Asger Jorn in Paris. She studied European sculpture under the sculptor Venturino Venturi in Florence and later in Vienna. She was influenced by many western modern sculptors such as Henry Moore.

Career
Ahmed jointly worked with Hamidur Rahman on the original design of the Shaheed Minar, Dhaka. During 1956-1960, she had done about 100 sculptures in Dhaka. Out of her 100 sculptures, 33 sculptures are currently in Bangladesh National Museum. Ahmed's first exhibition was held in University of Dhaka in 1960. Another exhibition of her works was held in Lahore in 1961. Her last exhibition was also held in Paris in July 1973.

Style and technique
Ahmed's early works resembled geometrical forms made by stones and concrete and anthropomorphic forms - mixing the human figure and animals. Then she used iron and steel and later bronze. She began sprays paintings, using plane crash remains from the US army (1964–1969). After her bad accident, her drawings included shapes and figures of a meditative character: space, island, birds in the sky, phoenix, flowers, water, sunshine and the moon, minimalist landscapes, human figures turned toward a new horizon and others.

Personal life
Ahmed was married to a police officer in mid 1954 in Calcutta. The couple got divorced in late 1954. She started living in France since the 1970s. In 1984, she married Gregoire de Brouhns in 1984.

Death and legacy
Ahmed suffered a stroke in 2010 and she was in a wheelchair since then. She died on 6 May 2015 at a hospital in Paris, France. In August 2017, the ministry of cultural affairs of the Government of Bangladesh announced a plan to purchase ten paintings of Ahmed for $47,000.

On 29 March 2019, search engine Google commemorated Novera Ahmed with a Doodle on her 80th birth anniversary.

Selected works

References

Further reading
 

Category:1939 births
Category:2015 deaths
Category:People from Chittagong
Category:20th-century Bangladeshi sculptors
Category:20th-century Indian sculptors
Category:Modern sculptors
Category:Bangladeshi women sculptors
Category:Bangladeshi women artists
Category:Bengali women artists
Category:Alumni of Camberwell College of Arts
Category:Recipients of the Ekushey Padak
Category:20th-century women artists
Category:Artists from Chittagong