The Chandigarh Canvas

The Geometry of Perception

Chandigarh, with its rectangles, squares and circles imposes a geometric vision to the inner dreams of local painters, says Nirupama Dutt

There are cities and cities. And each city has its own unique architecture. There are cross-and-circle town plans, cityscapes of domes and arches or slope-roofed hill towns. And then there are colours. Pink is the colour of the traditionally designed buildings of Jaipur, the roofs of old Shimla town were green and red and yellow sandstone structures went into the building of Jaisalmer.
Come to Le Corbusier's Chandigarh with its rectangles, squares and circles connected by straight roads interesting at right angles. The dominant colours are grey of concrete and burnished red of brick. Such is the architectural legacy of a painter born to this city. The inner visions and dreams of the artist constantly meet a given geometrical vision which seems to push away even the gentle contours of the Shivalik hills. The scale of this city is described as ``monumental and daunting''.
How can an artist living here not be influenced by the precisely measured 1,200 by 800 meters dimensions of a sector, space organized in frames, all facades controlled by sharp angles? So geometric patterns and organized interiors peep out of the work of painters here.
From among the works, the canvases of the Chandigarh artists can be picked out by their characteristic geometrical patterns. Ishwar Dayal, a city artist who teaches in Government College of Art, remarks: ``Most images of artists who have grown up in this city are in frames. Inside the window and outside it is the dominant theme. And looking at the rows of paintings, the truth of this observation meets the eye time and again.
The window symbol is used repeatedly and in Ishwar's own work in shades of aqua green, chrome and deep blue, the theme is woven through the sights inside the window and outside. The rectangular frame of the window is to be found in the paintings of Malkit Singh, Prakash and many others. Shattered seas of dreams and flying fish surround the theme man and woman in limbo in the beautifully painted canvas by S Raj Kumar. Geometric shapes are juxtaposed against flowing contours of the human body.
The broken steel frame of the aquarium strikes the eye as do many triangular bits of broken glass. These symbols of the city shapes seem to be piercing a languid and lazy dream.
Sensuality characterizes the female figures by Satwant Singh and in his painting of white looking out of yellows and reds in the background woman is at her most erotic, riding a rooster. Even this very open image is not shorn of patterns of interiors in the background.
And geometrical lines are well delineated in a canvas by Viren Tanwar in which the human body is invisible but underclothes parade boldly in a pattern of diagonal stripes and a double frame, understating the rectangular space provided by the canvas. Raj K Jain has often explored the subtle shadings and textures that emerge from the play of light on brick.
Thus the artists re-work the visual world bequeathed to the city artists by Corbusier.