Anna Molka Ahmad founded it, and since then, there have been many graceful, charming and refined women, who showed a great deal of practicality and wisdom, in their work as well as in their approach towards, life without losing the flair of womanliness.

Mrs. Anwar Afzal is one such woman who with all her affection, love and rationale, nurtured the first generation of artists at the Department of Fine Arts of the University of the Punjab.

Mrs. Anwar Afzal was born after the World War I in 1923, when in the West; the anguish of Dadaism was changing the conceptual and visual meanings of art. She studied at the Department of Fine Arts, Punjab University from 1941 to 1944, the era smudged with the destruction of World War II that sowed the seed of Post-Modernism.

In our beloved city Lahore, that epoch is marked with the birth of the Fine Arts Department, under the umbrella of the University of the Punjab in 1940.

Mrs. Anwar Afzal is one of the first makings of this very department and from the first batch of teachers as she was appointed lecturer here in this department in 1947; the year when Pakistan came into being. Therefore, she had the honour to teach the first ever class of art students at the Fine Arts Department in Pakistan along with Mrs. Anna Molka Ahmad.

The archival record of Punjab University suggests that Mrs. Afzal was a regular participant of the exhibitions arranged by the Department of Fine Arts in 1952, 1954, 1955 and in 1959 with her paintings.

Not only, she was creative with her expression as a painter, but also at the same time; she was an academician, fully aware of the depth and linkage of art-criticism and visual arts. She wrote on some very sensitive and insightful subjects and expressed her unique ability to comprehend delicate issues related to the technique and concept of painting. In one of her essays ‘LANDSCAPE IN MUGHAL ART’, published in the VISTA; the Research Journal of the Fine Arts Department, she discussed the dilemma of a painter in these words:

Here, we can listen to the resonance of the pounding thoughts of a mentor, who is trying to explain the complexity of the procedure; an artist has to face in giving the tangible shape to the intangible ideas and concepts, through various mediums of painting.

Mrs. Afzal was also appointed as the Chairperson of Fine Arts Department in 1973 and in 1979.

However, the way she served this department as a teacher, and influenced many with her soft nature, malleable personality and affectionate approach towards her students, would remain eternal.

She was one of the pioneers of Art in Pakistan, who not only introduced the modern and western trends to this part of the globe, but also excavated the oriental and traditional heritage related to the infinite visage of the visual arts.

Mrs. Afzal is no more! She breathed her last in the last week of the year 2011, but her contribution and efforts in shaping early period of Pakistani art, will never be forgotten.

May her soul rest in peace!