Asim Butt

Asim Butt was a Pakistani artist and activist who lived in Karachi, Pakistan. His work has been exhibited in art museums and galleries in Pakistan and the United States, as well as Britain, Japan, Jordan, and Switzerland. His paintings are part of the permanent collections at the Tate, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and others. He was also an accomplished writer, having published several Urdu novels and books of poetry in the 1950s and wrote plays performed on Radio Pakistan. He was initially influenced by modernism, most notably Paul Klee, although later works also showed a traditional Islamic influence. He used geometric shapes, patterns, and calligraphy to create abstract compositions that reflected his ideas and emotions. He was a leading member of the Lahore Art Circle, a modernist group in Pakistan. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He returned to Pakistan briefly, but moved to England permanently in 1962. He worked as an art teacher and a director of the Contemporary Art Gallery in Rawalpindi. He received the President's Award for Pride of Performance in 1965. He was awarded the "Key to the City" of New York in 1975 — the only Pakistani to receive this award. To honor his work, a commemorative postage stamp was issued for him in 2006 by the Pakistan Postal Department. He died of natural causes in his studio in Karachi, Pakistan on 15 January 2010. He was 31 years old.