M. P. Alladin

Early life and education Alladin received a scholarship from the British Council to study at Birmingham College of Arts and Crafts. Alladin was born in Tacarigua, Trinidad and Tobago, to an Indo-Trinidadian Muslim family. He was educated at the Tacarigua Canadian Indian Mission School and the Government Training School in Port of Spain. Upon graduation, he received a British Council scholarship to study in Britain. and, from 1965 to 1979, served as Director of Culture.

Style and works Alladin is the first known Indo-Trinidadian visual artist. In Trinidad and Tobago in the first decades after independence, formally trained artists had been educated in Europe, the United States, or Canada, and the accepted form of artistic expression was, in Alladin's view, "Europeanized". As Director of Culture Alladin sought to develop and elevate the "folk arts" produced by the primarily African- and Indian-descended populations as a way to build national cultural consciousness. Alladin worked for the "liberation of the arts from overseas influences as far as expression, experiences and choice of subject matter went".

To mark the independence of Ghana in 1957, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago commissioned Alladin to create a work, which he called "Back to Africa" as a gift to the people of Ghana. In 1967 he produced another work as a gift to Ghana.

Alladin's portrayal of rural Indo-Trinidadian life in his paintings legitimised it as a subject for other Indo-Trinidadian painters who were trained in Western artistic traditions. Alladin's portrayal, according to Boodhoo, "gave a new dignity to this subject".

Legacy Satnarine Balkaransingh called Alladin "the 'Guru of painters' of Trinidad and Tobago in modern times". James Isaiah Boodhoo called him "without dispute the most influential of artists in Trinidad and Tobago" because of the role he played in the spread of art education and in nurturing the development of individual artists.

Alladin was an important influence on a wide range of artists. Boodhoo considered him a key influence, as did Carnival designers Wayne Berkeley and George Bailey, and fabric designer Althea McNish.

In 1969, Alladin was awarded the Public Service Medal of Merit (Gold) by the Government of Trinidad and Tobago.