Not only a painter, Anwar Jalal Shemza was also an accomplished writer and teacher. A British Council scholarship took him to the Slade School of Fine Art in 1956-‘59, but after a period in Pakistan, he decided to return to Stafford, in the United Kingdom. His unique style, which drew on Islamic abstract art, was developed through a painting practice that blended Western ideas of abstraction with Eastern influences such as Islamic architecture and calligraphy.
