Rabia Zuberi is a unique achiever in the art world of Pakistan. In an unusually quiet and dignified way Muslim and eastern to the core she has been practicing sculpture as an artist and promoting art as an art teacher whose Karachi School of Art has now become an institution in its own right in the last 40 years. School principal and sculptor Rabia Zuberi is inspirable and therefore incomparable in dedication to promoting and at the same time practicing art.

There is nothing in her gentle and urbane appearance to suggest that she would undertake a tough assignment life-long, that is, to become a sculptor. The hard work that sculpting requires alone has driven many men to switch over to more manageable pursuit of painting. Rabia Zuberi has not been daunted by the prospects of working with clay, mud, metal, wood and other unwieldy materials all her life.

Ever since she managed to shape animals, birds and children at a school in INDIA, she has been sculpting with clay with greater dedication and will to work out newer and more refined versions of her initial efforts.

She is a contented person, not at all afflicted with the rat race mentality of many of her contemporaries. By working with the skill and understanding of the medium, her first sculptures brought a string of laurels on all India basis as she confidently took part in art competitions soon after graduation at Lucknow in 1961 to 1963 in India before she moved to Karachi in 1964.

Ever since she gradually began to induct modern ideas into her sculptures, Rabia Zuberi have been trying to evolve a meaningful style in which the simplification of form continued to engage her creative powers. The grace of the linear, vertical lines filled with mass and suitable form has been yielding much too slowly to her skill. She kept on working in the direction she had taken with determination and dedication of a talented artist whose time was often too suddenly usurped by her art school which had also been demanding as much energy as her artistic pursuit.

Conceptual clarity graced by technical soundness continued to distinguish her works and even in Pakistan, her sculptures were given second prizes by the national council of art and at the first biennial at Lahore in 1988.

The sculpture in her is more sublime in dealing with subjects, which are interesting, but technically demanding. Here the face appear in a big way and with “Inner feelings” dominating each and every of the 50 pieces displayed at her first big solo show at the Pakistan American cultural center, she produced a dazzling range of works.