WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU SEE
Imran Mir was a pioneering Pakistani artist and designer who challenged conventions through bold minimalism and experimental color. After studying at CIAC Karachi and Ontario College of Art and Design, he returned to Pakistan in 1978 with a modernist approach that established him as the country's premiere design guru.
His artistic practice, organized into twelve theoretical Papers on Modern Art, has been exhibited internationally at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, National Museum of Qatar, Grosvenor Gallery London, and Mohatta Palace Museum Karachi, alongside galleries in the USA, Netherlands, India, and Sri Lanka. His revolutionary commercial work created iconic Pakistani brands like MCB, Dawn News, and Shan Masala.
At 36th São Paulo Biennale
Imran Mir's pioneering work continues to reach new global audiences with his selection for the prestigious 36th São Paulo Biennale, "Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice."
His geometric abstractions from the "Seventh Paper on Modern Art" (1987) embody the exhibition's exploration of alternative pathways and inner discovery, joining 120 international artists from September 2025 to January 2026 in reimagining humanity through artistic practice and authentic self-expression.
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Pakistani modernist pioneer joins 120 international artists at world's second-oldest art biennale
The late artist's geometric abstractions from "Seventh Paper on Modern Art" will be showcased at the prestigious four-month exhibition in Brazil, continuing his legacy of challenging artistic boundaries and inspiring global audiences.
Pioneering Pakistani artist Imran Mir's groundbreaking work is being showcased at Qatar Museums' landmark exhibition "MANZAR: Art and Architecture from Pakistan 1940s to Today." Known for his bold minimalist and modernist approach, Mir structured his artistic practice around what he called "Papers" on modern art, creating twelve distinct bodies of work that challenged conventional artistic boundaries through experimental use of color and planar fractures. The exhibition, running from November 2024 to January 2025 at the National Museum of Qatar, presents Mir's work alongside other pivotal figures who shaped Pakistan's artistic landscape over the past eight decades.
The exhibition Colours and Lines in Motion brings together three abstract artists to foster a dialogue spanning an arc from the mid-twentieth century to the recent past. A concentration on colours, lines and planes along with the radical rejection of any manner of representationalism describe the narrative thread that is shared by Verena Loewensberg, Imran Mir and Anton Stankowski. All three also have in common their personal exchange with the artist and designer Max Bill. Nonetheless, in each case their works testify to a respectively individual vocabulary of abstraction that fuse local cultural influences and biographical circumstances, but also contemporary history.
Photographs from the opening of Sedje Hémon, Imran Mir, Abdias Nascimento, Abstracting Parables, 2022. sonsbeek20→24, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
The next stop on the journey of sonsbeek 20→24, the international Arnhem-based art manifestation, will be Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. This exhibition brings together three historical artistic positions, that of: Dutch-Jewish painter and composer Sedje Hémon, Afro-Brazilian painter, poet, essayist, dramatist and member of Parliament Abdias Nascimento, and Pakistani artist and designer Imran Mir.
The Imran Mir Art Foundation is pleased to announce the recipients of the fourth cycle of the Imran Mir Art Prize, Noormah Jamal and Haider Ali Naqvi. This year we received our highest number of applications so far, making it a particularly competitive year. At the end, the jury decided to jointly award the prize for this cycle and both the artists will have an opportunity for a solo exhibition in 2020 in Karachi.
The Imran Mir Art Prize seeks to recognize emerging art practitioners in Pakistan, who demonstrate extraordinary promise and talent. The prize was instituted in 2014 to honor the legacy of the late artist Imran Mir. For the third cycle of the prize, the Imran Mir Art Foundation collaborated with the Lahore Biennial Foundation, and the award ceremony took place at the historic Lahore Fort during the opening ceremony of the inaugural Lahore Biennial.
An aspiring young artist drew on her sensibilities to come forward with a subject that long desired an ovation. Jovita Alvares’s solo show Wallflower reconnoiters the powerful presence of the Bougainvillea plant signifying it’s potent and commandeering relationship with the concrete structures of urbanization.
The Imran Mir Art Foundation presents ‘Wallflower’, a solo exhibition by the winner of the second cycle of the Imran Mir Art Prize, Jovita Alvares. The Imran Mir Art Foundation encourages and promotes young artists of Pakistan, true to the legacy of the late artist Imran Mir.
This exhibition of more than fifty works by the artist brings together some of his earliest works as well as his most recent explorations of form and space. “The Alchemist of Line” is curated by Nasreen Askari, Director of the Mohatta Palace Museum, and Durriya Kazi, the Head of the Department of Visual Studies at the Karachi University, who not only take us on a journey through four decades of the artist’s illustrious career but manage to highlight new narratives through the curatorial decisions they have made. The exhibit is divided into five rooms, each leading into the next, guiding the audience across a thematic presentation that creates new points of interest in the artist’s oeuvre.
We can’t wait to welcome you all to the Mohatta Palace Museum for the exhibition Imran Mir: The Alchemist of Line.
Imran Mir: The Alchemist of line is presented by the Mohatta Palace Museum, Karachi, in the first-floor galleries of the Museum. The exhibition was curated by Nasreen Askari, the Director of Mohatta Palace Museum, and Prof. Durriya Kazi, Head of Department of Visual Studies at the University of Karachi. A previously published fully illustrated book accompanies the exhibition with original essays on the artist’s work.
The exhibition will be open to the public and on view from October 21, 2017 to October 22, 2018, at the Mohatta Palace Museum. The opening preview will take place on October 20, 2017. The opening of the exhibition aligns with the first Karachi Art Biennial.







When curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung placed Pakistani artist Imran Mir alongside Mozambican-Italian painter Bertina Lopes at the 2025 São Paulo Biennial, the pairing revealed profound parallels in postcolonial modernism. Both transformed geometric abstraction into vehicles for cultural resistance, synthesizing local traditions with international artistic languages to assert identity through exile and displacement.