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Published : 07 May 2015, 12:05 PM
The artist died in her sleep on Tuesday night local time at her home in Chantemesle near Paris. She had been living in France for a long time.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Press Secretary AKM Shameem Chowdhury said Hasina expressed deep shock, saying the sculptor’s demise was a great loss for the nation
Bangladesh’s first modern sculptor and one of the original designers of the Central Shaheed Minar, Novera Ahmed, was honoured with the Ekhushey Padak in 1997.
According to a Facebook post in her official fan page, a ‘private funeral would be held on Monday morning at a cemetery’ in the area where she lived.
A bright student, Ahmed was awarded a Diploma in Design at the Camberwell School of Art in London in 1955.
During her stay there, she met artist Hamidur Rahman, the other designer of the Shaheed Minar, the memorial built to honour the memory of the martyrs of the 1952 Language Movement.
The two started to design the Shaheed Minar in 1957.
Between 1956 and 1960, Ahmed had worked on about 100 sculptures in capital Dhaka. Out of them, 33 sculptures were collected by the National Museum.
Her first exhibition was held at Dhaka University in 1960. However, she also reportedly left for Pakistan’s Lahore around that time.
Six of her sculptures were also included in an exhibition in Lahore in 1961.
According to Hashem Khan, Novera Ahmed left for Mumbai after staying several years in Lahore.
From there she went to Paris, before returning to Lahore after some time. But she did not stay there for long.
After visiting several other countries, the sculptor settled in France where an exhibition was held in July 1973.
After a four-decade-long break, a retrospective exhibition of her body of work took place in January last year in Paris.
