Every life has a story…

…and the art lies in the fact that how well can it be told on paper, canvas or stage. Viren Tanwar is one of the few artists who has done his city proud by painting well the saga of life, says Nirupama Dutt

They come in a horde to study at the Chandigarh’s College of Art. The reasons for being here vary. Some come to make a career in teaching, others merely because they somehow managed to get admission here and some just to while away their time. There are very few who come here with the dream of becoming an artist. Or for that matter, very few have the ability to be an artist. But in every other batch there are one or two students who find the place conducive for their talent to take wing and fly and one gasps and says: One flew over the painter’s nest.
SHOW MUST GO ON: ‘Circus-Circus’ is the name of the show of some 20 paintings that Viren Tanwar has painted under the collective title of ‘Story without an end’. The works highlight the balancing act that the human species are always performing either alone or in unison.This show will open at the Apparao Galleries at Chennai on November 27.
Class of 1974
The Class of 1974 had one such bright boy, surprisingly a Jaat from an aristocratic family of Hisar. While other boys of the family chose to study law and engineering, this one would settle for nothing but art. His name was Viren Tanwar and when one came out as reporter covering the city’s art scene in the late-Seventies, Viren with his lean-and-tall aesthetic looks was already towering over it. One knew him less but his paintings stood out in the group shows and one could not but, call them ‘outstanding’ in the limited art vocabulary at hand.
Viren was as painterly as he came and this made him a favourite teacher to many as well as inspiration when he started teaching in the same college that had groomed him. But now looking back, one feels that what was most striking was the dignity that he imparted to the human form even when he was dealing with the gross. And this week one is face-to-face with the canvases of this painter who has indeed done the city, his friends and family as well as his faithful students proud by passing through the rough and tumble of life to paint the ‘Story without an end…’
Art & life
This is the title of the paintings that Viren has put together in a show at the Apparao Galleries in Chennai on November 27 and Viren is at his narrative best and his work has matured in the cellar of his creativity and what makes him special is that he retains his ability to laugh at life and what it brings; sometimes the smile of his five-month-young grandson and sometimes the hurt of recalling the past, which can only be described by the title of a Dostoevsky novel: ‘Insulted and Humiliated’. But it was not Viren’s lot alone. We all dreamy-eyed children of the Seventies suffered so in one way or the other. Some got lost on the way, others called it quits and some were destined to live through it all and rise phoenix-like from the ashes.
Anyway the only humiliation for a creative spirit is that she/he be alienated from one’s own art. “Well, it nearly happened and making a living and looking after the more worldly needs there were times I felt that I would never be able to paint with the fervour that I had in youth,” says Viren. But it has happened and once again this blue-eyed artist of the city is soaring in ‘Circus-Circus’, the title for his show that is going to Chennai. One chuckles with Viren, for taking the Circus to Chennai is typically ‘ulate baans Bareli ko’ and that is what has been more challenging to the artist as he has struck balance with the acrobats, mind you the girls have blossoms in their hair. And the colours, Viren has used are the bright and vivid hues of Kanchivaram silks. So there is a riot of oranges, reds, greens, blues magentas and what have you.
A jingle again
Yes, Viren haven’t these fifty odd years of our lot been such a circus! We were condemned not just to watch from the wings Kabir-like the ‘jag ka mujra’ but very often wear the bells on our ankles and go ajingle right there midst the jeering crowd. But it has been worth it for the moments lived in life and art. Knowing the likes of us, we may yet again get down to acrobatics. But Viren would say that when did we ever leave the acrobatics. We were performing the Circus and we continue to do so. Ours is indeed a story without an end: happy or sad!