16 Facts About SM Sultan

SM Sultan's fame rests on his striking depictions of exaggeratedly muscular Bengali peasants engaged in the activities of their everyday lives.

SM Sultan's early works were influenced by western technics and forms, particularly impressionism in his later works particularly, works exhibited in 1976, we discover there is a constant temptation to decolonize his art technics and forms.

SM Sultan was born in Machimdia village, in what was then Jessore District, British India on 10 August 1923.

SM Sultan seized every opportunity to draw with charcoal, and developed his talent depicting the buildings his father worked on.

SM Sultan wanted to study art in Calcutta, but his family did not have the means to send him.

Meanwhile, SM Sultan joined Allama Mashriqi's Khaksar movement in British India.

SM Sultan did not meet the admissions requirements of the Government School of Art, but in 1941 managed to get in with the help of Suhrawardy, who was on the school's governing body.

SM Sultan left art school after three years, in 1944, and traveled around India.

SM Sultan earned his living by drawing portraits of Allied soldiers encamped along his route.

SM Sultan's first exhibition was a solo one in Shimla, India, in 1946.

SM Sultan settled down in an abandoned building overlooking the Chitra River, where he lived with an eclectic collection of pets.

SM Sultan lived close to the land and far from the outside art world for the next twenty-three years, developing a reputation as a whimsical recluse and a Bohemian.

SM Sultan did some of his best work in the 1970s and 1980s.

SM Sultan received the Ekushey Padak, Bangladesh's highest civilian award for contribution in the field of arts, in 1982; the Bangladesh Charu Shilpi Sangsad Award in 1986; and the Independence Day Award, the highest state award given by the government of Bangladesh, in 1993 for his contribution to fine arts.

SM Sultan established the Kurigram Fine Arts Institute at Narail in 1969 and another art school, now named Charupeeth, in Jessore in 1973.

In 1989, Tareque Masud directed a 54-minute documentary film on SM Sultan's life, called Adam Surat.