Today is the 83rd birth anniversary of the eminent sculptor Novera Ahmed, who is considered the first modern sculptor in Bangladesh.

Born on March 29, 1939, Novera Ahmed’s works feature a gamut of themes, including Buddhist and contextual modern subject matters and styles ranging from western, folk and others.

Novera Ahmed was born in a culturally inclined family in Chittagong, where she was inspired by her mother’s skills in making doll houses out of clay and became fascinated with working with three-dimensional forms. The sculptor herself remained an enigma for scholars and thinkers.

A book on Novera Ahmed, published in 1995, written by Hasnat Abdul Hye that represented a version of Novera Ahmed which Rezaul Karim Sumon, a scholar who has done extensive research on Ahmed, described to be “more fiction than fact” and “full of speculation viewed through the male-gaze.” In fact, the representation of Ahmed in the media in Bangladesh general was mostly poorly-sourced guesswork concocted out of rumours or less.

She is remembered mostly as the woman who dressed as Baishnabi wearing rudraksh garland and the confident figure who went about boldly in a reactionary society of the 50’s.

Novera studied design at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London and graduated in 1955. Then she went on to receive further training in Florence and Vienna.

She rose to prominence in 1960 with Inner Gaze, the first-ever solo sculpture exhibition by any sculptor in the then Pakistan.

Novera Ahmed, along with Hamidur Rahman, designed the Central Shaheed Minar, which commemorates the 1952 Language Movement, on Dhaka University campus.

More than 30 of her major sculptural pieces are housed in Bangladesh National Museum, Dhaka, while some of her latter-day works can be viewed at the Novera Ahmed Museum, founded in 2018 by her husband in the small town of La Roche-Guyon outside of Paris, France.

To Novera Ahmed art is and should always be part of the everyday life of a healthy society. She said “We must let the people grow up with work of art playing a direct positive part in their everyday lives. We must return to the concept of city planning which has inspired the growth of great cities of the world, giving it a new interpretation. We must ignite among our people the spark of curiosity, about the inner visions, meanings and truths of life, which can come only by bringing art within the horizon of our city life.”

When describing the works of the first modern Bangladeshi sculptor Novera Ahmed, Zainul Abedin proclaimed, “It will take us a long time to understand what Novera is doing here– she is that kind of artist.” This aptly describes the forward-looking and progressive thought of the pioneer in the field of sculpture, Novera Ahmed.

An exhibition was arranged from her works left behind in Dhaka in April-May, 1998.

She received Ekushey Padak in 1997. Novera Ahmed passed away on May 6, 2015.

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