User:Tahira Arshed

Rashid Arshed

Rashid Arshed was born in Tehal, a small village in the hills in Gujrat district of the Punjab, Pakistan. He received early education at home and passed Matriculation Examination from T.I. High School in 1953. He joined the Mayo School of Arts, Lahore (now National College of Arts) in 1956 and graduated in 1960 receiving Mayo Prize, the highest distinction for a graduate. Rashid Arshed moved to Karachi to join a teaching position where he continued to paint. In 1963 he received Second Prize in Karachi Artists’ Annual. He joined the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts, Karachi in 1967 as a Senior Lecturer and became its Principal in 1970. In 1975, he migrated to the USA. In the same year he wrote and broadcast nine essays on Art and Culture of Germany for the Urdu Service of Deutsche Welle, Cologne.

In USA, Arshed continued to paint assiduously and in 1976, within a year of his arrival, his work was selected by the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut for a show, ‘Contemporary Reflections’, that took place in Summer 1967. His work has also been shown at the Jersey City Museum, NJ, Heckcher Museum Huntington, NY and at the Art Center of New Jersey where he won the Best of Show Award in 1992.

Arshed lived and worked in New York City Metropolitan area. His first job as an artist, was with Mimosa Tree inc,. 247 West 37 Street in New York City. In 1978 he joined Volt Information Sciences Inc., a New York base publishing company. He lived in New Jersey until 1982 and then moved to Rahway and commuted to work from there. When the company moved to Syosset, Long Island, he took up residence in Woodbury in 1990.

1n 1998, Arshed moved to Martin, Tennessee where his wife was a Professor at the University of Tennessee. In 2000, the University Museum organized a retrospective of Rashid Arshed’s work covering his 25-year stay in the USA. In 2003 the University Museum held a show called ‘Leaves of Lanka’, an exhibit of photographs he took in Sri Lanka in 2002.

In January 2006, on the invitation of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, Arshed joined the school as Head of the Fine Art Department.

Rashid Arshed wrote an urdu book ‘Jungle main Mangal’, a collection of humorous essays. He is also the author of other essays on art, including ‘The Concept of Art in Islam.”

Though his paintings are very contemporary in look and appeal, Arshed’s work is famous for innovative use of Islamic script and calligraphy. Arshed’s work has been displayed in the USA, UK, Pakistan, Europe, Iran and in several other countries and is in many private and corporate collections in Pakistan, USA and Europe.