Zahoor Ul Akhlaq

Born in Delhi in 1941, Akhlaq moved to Pakistan in 1947 after the Partition. In 1958, he went to study art in Lahore at the Mayo School of Arts (now, the National College of Arts) where the well-known Pakistani painter Shakir Ali was a professor. Shakir Ali greatly influenced his artistic studies and after graduating Akhlaq began teaching at the same college in the Fine Arts Department. Shakir Ali encouraged him to learn the Cubist style and other modern ideas of that time. Akhlaq attended the Royal College of Art between 1968 and 1969, and received a Fulbright Research Fellowship at Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Religion and the Arts and at Yale School of Art from 1987 to 1989. Akhlaq exhibited internationally and nationally at RCD Biennale, Tehran (1965), Sao Paulo Biennale (1976), Hershorn Museum (1982), the Lahore Museum and Pakistan Art Council, Karachi.