Anwar Jalal Shemza was born in Simla and grew up in Lahore. He earned his degree in art from the Mayo School of Art in 1947, the same year that the violence of Partition, which divided India and created Pakistan, claimed the lives of many of his family members. Shemza taught art in Lahore and was a founder of the Lahore Art Circle, a group of young modernist artists. There he enjoyed success both as a visual artist and as a writer until 1956, when he left to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. There, his work changed dramatically as he questioned his art and cultural identity. Fascinated by the works of Paul Klee and his emphasis on surface, Shemza began an artistic exploration that resulted in the development of a new direction of calligraphic modernism based on his knowledge and experience of carpet patterns, Mughal architecture from Lahore and Arabic calligraphic forms. Shemza briefly considered moving back to Pakistan in 1960, but poor career options there led him to permanently settle in the UK with his English wife Mary and their growing family. Throughout his career, Shemza showed his work in the UK, Pakistan, and internationally, and grappled with issues of his diaspora status.

Poppy Heads presents imagined plant forms based on poppy seed heads, and is a pivotal work of Shemza’s career. The forms explored in this drawing became the basis for his Roots series, the group of works he executed from 1977 until his death in 1985. The imagined plant forms represent Shemza’s new exploration of ornament as a modernist experiment.