Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
After graduating from the National College of Arts in Lahore, Mirza set up a gallery, later an advertising agency, in Karachi. In 1969 he left for Germany and on returning painted the Lonely Girl series of which the Blue lady is one. The freedom afforded to German women, so different from that in Pakistan, informed these portraits. Some, revealing too much body, shocked his public, but critics wrote that the girls exhibited expressions of sadness or a kind of psychological emptiness. The Blue girl does have a worried look.