In his essay, Moinuddin Khaled pointed the salient features of the art of Zainul Abedin. He described Zainul as different from all major artists of the subcontinent, especially from his predecessors and contemporaries. Zainul's art depicts his subjects neither in the realistic nor the representational way of the European painters.

Mainuddin Khaled said, 'Zainul unlike the realist artists of France did not go back to village in order to get rid of the pain of the city. He didn't even depict any protest through the figures of the rural people. He rather wanted to paint the landscape and the joy and rhythm of life inherent to the people of the rural world. Zainul differentiated his painting from the European realism by incorporating two characteristics--presence of sharp lines and bright colour. There is a touch of Expressionism in Zainul's creation, but as a whole there is no ism in Zainul's paintings.'

His famine series does not just depict the negative aspects of life--bestial life of human beings, suffering and death. On the contrary, it presents tremendous optimism through man's fight for his survival, the strength of his belief in it. To quote Khaled, 'Zainul's humans are laid like mummy, not corpse. His composition is erect like pyramid.'

Dr. Syed Azizul Haque pointed in his discussion, 'Zainul was always very much inclined to the periphery, not the centre. This point should have come in the essay. In the '30s when he came to Dhaka from Kolkata, he never worked for the centre--Karachi or Rawalpindi. May be he was very much related with the centre but never became one of them.' After the Liberation War he was very much involved with the periphery again when the centre was Dhaka. He built Zainul Chitrashala in Mymensingh and Folklore Museum in Sonargaon. To understand his modernity we must understand his peripheral inclination first.'

The other discussant the Director of the Institute of Fine Arts, Dr. Abdus Sattar noted that the political side of Zainul's life had been dropped out of the essay. The great leader Maulana Bhashani and Zainul Abedin were contemporary and they had a relationship between them. Whenever there was a natural calamity in the country, they both used to run to the suffering people. Zainul painted Bhashani's portrait, but he never painted anybody else's again.'

Photographer Dr. Nawajish Ahmed, speaking as the chief guest, said, 'The students of Zainul have a very little influence of Zainul on them. But the photographers of the country is strongly influenced by Zainul's creation.'