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Khan Anbul Ghani Khan (1914-1996) was the son of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Known as Bacha Khan (1890-1988) who was a political activist. Unlike his father and his brother, Khan Abdul Wali Khan, Ghani Khan was a poet, painter and sculptor par excellence. Although he is well known as a poet both nationally and internationally, very few people are aware that he was as great a painter and a sculptor, too. In this short paper, I try to present Ghani Khan as a multi-faceted personality neither whose paintings are 'dumb poetry' nor whose poems are 'blind paintings' (Richter & Wells, 2008-188). I have also included illustrations of some of his paintings and sculptures for the interest of the readers.
Keywords: Ghani Khan, Pakistani artists, Pukhtun personalities, poet-painter
"And if you, O Poet, tell a story with your pen, the painter with his brush can tell it more easily. If you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting. Consider then which is the more grievous defect, to be blind or dumb?"
(Richter & Wells, 2008:188)
Ghani Khan: The Poet-Painter
Michelangelo (1475-1564), the Renaissance artist, was perhaps the earliest figure in the history of visual arts who was equally seasoned in painting, sculpture and poetry, and in the following centuries there had been, of course, many people with alike personality of poet-painter, such as Rembrandt (1606-69) and William Blake (1757-1827), and that the one who was born in the Indian Sub-continent was Tagore (1861-1941); long been recognized for his literary contributions1, who enjoyed not only literature but also painting, sculpture and music. The next descendant of this caste was Abdul Ghani Khan (1914-96), the elder son the RedShirt leader Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Bacha Khan (1890-1988). Though the early chapters of his life were devoted to politics, he like his teacher, Rabindranath Tagore, has natural ability in exhibiting his dexterity in poetry, prose, painting and sculpture with such a generosity and devotion that painting may rival his position of fame as poet, or his poems are not ordinary competitors of his prose. Yet alive to 'the marvelous manifestations of nature' and a great love for his people, the Pukhtuns (Khan, 1958:1), he could hear voices of the invisible cosmos; his eyes...