Paramjit Singh's Invented Landscapes

Nature’s strokes

The landscapes by the artist reaffirm his painterly prowess and a rare feel for the textures of nature, writes Nirupama Dutt

The colour of the earth is a yellow-gold. Auburn shadows fall on frail trees that elegantly sway with the breeze. Patches of dark green make the suggestion of a wild forest. The sky is filled with clouds and looks dark and promising. In this painting, titled Monsoon Light, Paramjit Singh, the master of stroke, captures a rare moment of a sunshine shower that probably would not last beyond half an hour. But that quaint twinkling when the clouds ad sunrays challenge one another to a game of hide and seek is captured beautifully in rapid brush strokes. It is landscape at it its purest form. No human presence intrudes but, of course, for the viewer who stands gasping at the spectacle of nature recreated by a fine and practiced brush.

Singh is famous for the magical quality of his landscapes. His works reaffirm his painterly prowess and the ease with which he is able to translate nature into oil on canvas. He is a landscape artist with a difference, for—but for his student days—he does not go to a spot and paint it at a given time. His landscapes are the result of a long communion with nature. He has absorbed nature deeply ad when he faces the empty canvas, the conscious and the subconscious combine in creating these ecstatic landscapes of the mind. Talking of his works, Singh says: ``These are invented landscapes no doubt but the feel of nature is real.’’

The love for nature took root in his mind when he was a young boy. Singh, who grew up in a large joint family in Amritsar, in the 1940s, recalls: ``My father was a religious person. My childhood was enriched by the stories he would tell me. I remember when he told me stories from the life of Guru Nanak, I would imagine a landscape. This so because Nanak was a traveler and the anecdotes from his life included rivers, rocks, mountains and the sky. Also, as children, we were mostly outdoors as there were no televisions and computers to trap us at home.’’ Bathing at the tube-well in the fields as a young boy or cycling long distances as a student of Khalsa School, Amritsar, was among his main joys. This passion for outdoors continued when he joined the Delhi Polytechinc School of Arts in 1953. ``It was a beautiful un-crowded Delhi and we would cycle on the ridge or walk through the wilds which were later tamed into the Buddha Jayanti Gardens. The ruins and old monuments were another attraction,’’ says the painter.

The environment at the art school was very charged ad the faculty included famed artists like B.C. Sanyal, Biren De, Sailoz Mukherjee, Dhan Raj Bhagat and Jaya Appaswamy. His college-mates included Suraj Ghai, R K Dhawan, Eric Bowin and, of course, Arpita Singh, who was to become his muse and later his partner in life. ``It was the right guidance and the right climate which we found as students and this helped us to pick up the right nuances which were to bloom later. We were indeed well-bitten by the art bug,’’ says Singh, It is here that the world of art opened up before this Amritsar lad who was among the first crop of painters of Independent India. Like most artists of the time, he too was deeply influenced by the French Impressionists and in his case the influence went into shaping his early works.

Singh did figurative work and was acknowledged as a fine portrait painter in his early days. But when he set o to become a professional painter, it was nature that inspired him the most. ``Art has to become a part of you. And truly with me are the rivers, the fields, the rocks and the skies. I have never ceased to enjoy the mysteries and marvels of nature,’’ says the artist.

Primarily he is a colourist but in the early days, he painted some still life juxtaposed with elements of nature or rocks looming over the landscapes, Gradually, however, the sheer pleasure of colour and brush-work took over. Commenting on his work, fellow artist and a former colleague at Jamia Milia, A Ramachandran, says, ``It is natural that in the art arena of today’s cerebral circus, Singh’s paintings do not receive the attention they deserve because they are pure works of art. Rising above the thin dividing line between realism and abstraction, Singh transforms his picture-space into an animated painting-space with an abundance of brushstrokes which have become his signature.’’

Singh has been witness to the Capital’s art scene since the 1950s and he takes the changes in his stride. ``One does miss the good old days but then the interest in art has grown and the number of galleries and shows is phenomenal. In the early days, we ever missed a show and these days it is impossible to see everything!’’ he points out.

On his marriage to Arpita, one of the country’s leading painters, he says that it has been held together by art. ``We have appreciated each other’s work and even offered critical appraisal when required,’’ he says. Interestingly, a couple of years ago an art gallery invited couples to create one work. The painting by the Singhs showed a couple on a bench in a garden and an aeroplane flying across the sky. Singh says, ``The aeroplane, the couple and the bench were Arpita’s, I provided only the sky and the patch of green.’’ Well, the patch of green is certainly his forte and he knows how to make it work, by the lake, along the river, in the waves or in the monsoon light.

The Inimmitable Gogi Saroj Pal

Paint like a Woman

Gogi Saroj Pal creates a new visual vocabulary in her bold and sensitive portrayals, writes Nirupama Dutt

What do women like to paint? The instant association is that of a well brought-up young lady painting blooms and landscapes in the Victorian age. Closer home it is that of young ladies painting a deity on an earthen pot or a floral spray on fabric. Ancient Indian texts of the Eighth to the Twelfth Century have references of young women painting portraits of one another for matrimonial purposes; with the advent of photography came the Zenana Studios.

The Twentieth century saw the short but brilliant spell of Amrita Sher-Gil, who was schooled in art in Paris and is remembered for her paintings of people. After her death in 1941, came a long lull till there was an upsurge of women artists in the 1970s.

The path for the pioneers is never easy. ``Write like a man,’’ said Kamla Das, one of the pioneers of Indian poetry in English, and she stuck her tongue firmly in her cheek and wrote a poem on the theme. Gender stereotypes provoked Mahesh Dattani to pro to produce the play. Dance Like A Man.

In the field of visual arts, Gogi Saroj Pal made a virtue of not just painting like a woman but also painting women. ``I have never felt apologetic for making woman the main focus of my work. I am rather proud of being a woman and trying to unravel through my work what makes a woman, how much of a woman is conditioned and how much natural.’’

Refreshing indeed in a scenario where women painters feel afraid of being labeled as mere painters of women. It has been a long journey for Gogi, struggling not just to establish herself as an artist but also to achieve perfection of her own imagery.

In Gogi’s earlier works, one finds etchings of the sad-faced brooding feminine profile, the single woman nursing a child or a woman lying motionless, like in her series: The story and the story teller.

The viewer is struck by a delicate sensitivity even when the conviction is firm. But it is the growth of her work and the rare spontaneity that she achieves in a brilliant iconography of women which give her a place as one of the most remarkable woman painters in the country today.

While still in school, Gogi, who comes from a family of revolutionaries and her father, was arrested for making a bomb, made up her mind to be an artist. How come she did not opt to be a writer given the literary environment at home? ``I was always a great individualist and wanted to do things my own way. I preferred being the first artist in the family,’’ says Gogi. One only has to see Gogi’s paintings to understand the determination of this rather frail, young girl.

``I always had in me persistence. I would do things my way even if it meant enduring hardships,’’ she says. And so she did in her long years studying art and then practicing it, staying in the midst of the crowd and clutter of the walled city of Delhi or working in the Lalit Kala Akademi studios at Garhi. Gogi was among the first to do installations in Delhi. ``Now installations are much in vogue. But the words was not known in the early 1980s and we called the work assemblage’’ Gogi recalls.

This assemblage paved the way for Swayamvaram. This widely-travelled installation earned her a place in Oxford History of Modern Art along with masters like Raja Ravi Varma ad Rabindranath Tagore as well as the celebrated London-based artist Anish Kapoor.

Deep study, research and meditation and also a questioning mind, which gave a hard time to her art teachers, pay a role in the selection of her themes. Take, for instance her series, Aag ka Dariya, inspired by the Jigar Moradabadi couplet: ``Yeh Ishq Nahin Aasan bas Itna Samajh Leeje; Ik Aag Ka Dariya Hai Aur Doob Ke Jaana Hai. (Love is not easy; it’s like an ocean of fire and one has to drown in it.)’’ She shows a woman crossing a turbulent river with a little girl in her arms on a paper boat.

This journey is a contrast to the journey I which Vasudev saves baby boy Krishna whereas the baby girl Rajni is killed. ``This was my way of saying that women have to bear the responsibility of saving their daughters and the paper boat symbolizes childhood and dreams,’’ explains Gogi.

Inspired by the miniature painting of Bride’s Toilet, in one of her series, Gogi makes her Nayika use products like Ganga soap or Kesh Nikhar oil, having a dig at the market forces that promote stereotypes. ``The market decides what a woman must use, eat or even how she should look like. It was in reaction to the Barbie Doll that I made the Big-B dolls of Painted canvas,’’ says Gogi.

The Big B dolls have been a hit. Her latest series of painting have the woman embroidering Phulkari motifs o her body. These motifs are scattered in the backdrop too. All this is done with an accomplished flourish. The woman Gogi paints is rooted and yet has wings. Not a mean achievement this.

Painter Sohan Qadri

On form and the formless

Nirupama Dutt

From Chachoki village on the outskirts of Phagwara to Copenhagen was the long journey for artist Sohan Qadri, a person who refused to he dated whether in aesthetics or metaphysics. Journeying through the world of dots, lines, colour and form, his search was for the beyond. This was the theme of hislecture given at CRRID in Chandigarh on Tuesday evening.

A Qadri lecture is quite an event and so was this one titled `Aesthetics and Metaphysics'. For one Qadri invites a motely crowd of artists, writers, scholars, spiritualists and eccentrics. His old Doaba friends were there and so were younger artists. It began with a rather poor showing of a Jalandhar Doordarshan telefilm on him. But a film made very coherently by Harjit Singh brought forth a Qadri not obscure but alive and throbbing as he painted or spoke about his creative process or roamed by fields of sunflowers in his colourful kurtas. And Qadri himself was communicable in Punjabi.

To do him credit in his presentation, he was lucid and brief beginning with the primeval hunger of the human species and the invention of the sharp-edged exe going on to the sexual needs, then the yearning for self-expression and finally the ultimate in creativity which transcends into the metaphysical experience.

The question session which followed had more spiritualists rather than artists active in asking questions and sharing their own ethereal experiences making the whole affair an exercise in sky-walking. One of the more earthly persons tried to come back to the topic of the lecture which was the relationship of aesthetics to metaphysics. But that was not to be and he was scolded for being materialistic by the listeners Naturally, what is `Anand' when the ultimate goal is `Parmanand'?

The lecture over, the presidential remarks came from the poet and bureaucrat, Manmohan Singh, who said that he had got the invitation late or he would have written and brought along a poem on Qadri. He compensated with a two-liner, ``Qadri's life is a dance of dots. He is the darling of tiny tots''. One does not know about the tiny tots but the elders could not resist him and artist Balvinder caricatured him through the lecture with his receding hairline, fuzzy hair and the witch doctor look

Qadri's trip to the country this time was to attend the sexology conference in Delhi. ``The doctors were there to talk of their experiences with guinea pigs but I was there as a guinea pig.'' He promises to reveal it all in the next meeting. Until then it is metaphysically yours.

Oh! My Ganesha

Most-gifted God

Knowledge gets the better of wealth as Ganesha images are more in demand than those of Lakshmi, says Nirupama Dutt

The first European Embassy in Delhi to install Ganesha at its entrance was that of Ireland.
Ours is a culture of gods aplenty. But the most gifted-god remains the good old Ganesha, Ganapati or Vinayak for there are actually 1000 names for him. Gifted, of course, in ways more than one. The lovely elephant-head god with a potbelly and happily riding a mouse far too small for him is the lord of knowledge and wisdom. He is also the lord of prosperity and the symbol for anything auspicious and also the deity who presides over new beginnings.
Come Diwali and he literally becomes the most-gifted as a festival gift. In fact, it even has an edge over Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, as far as its popularity goes Images of Ganesha are wrought in gold, silver, brass, copper and what other metal one may fancy. He is moulded in crystal, sculpted in marble, cast in clay and woven in fabric. This so because he is considered the most auspicious. In fact, he has a romantic Bollywood song of yore dedicated to him: Yadi aap hamein aadesh karein to prem ka ham Shri Ganesh karein...
As the belief goes, gifting this friendly god brings good luck. K. Anuradha, a Tamilian living in Chandigarh says: "The gift of a Ganesha figurine always thrills me. I have nearly 60 Ganeshas at home. My aunt, however, has a collection of 108 for that is the most auspicious number."
Go to the google and enter Ganesha God and there are as many as 86, 143 sites available on him. And this Diwali Ganeshaonline limited is offering the god in 1000 different blessing moods. The gallery promo adds: "The idols and paintings of Ganesha of our Art Gallery are sculpted and painted by devotees of Lord Ganesha. So spread happiness in the lives of your friends and relatives by gifting them idol or painting of Lord Ganesha...and it will add to your happiness."
Interestingly, Ganesha is the most-painted god as far as the contemporary art scene goes. New Delhi has a well-known art gallery called Gallerie Ganesha. And doesn’t it do good business! Online there are as many as 35, 081 galleries selling art inspired by this benevolent son of Parvatil. Other gods like the more worshipped Rama and Krishna trail way behind.
Ask painters why they choose to paint Ganapati and the reply invariably is: "It is such an interesting form and one can play with it so well." Sounds convincing but asked city-based artist Balvinder, who has also painted Ganesha and his reply is: "The form is interesting but the real reason is that Ganesha is wanted even in art. So artists turn to him so that their works sell and they survive."

Global Ganesha
There are as many as 250 temples of Ganesha in Japan. He is known there as Kangiten who brings good fortune and happiness.
Ganesha is the presiding deity at the Silicon Valley in the USA because he is the god of knowledge and innovation.
Ancient Ganesha statues have been found in Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Mongolia, Japan, Indonesia, Boreni, Bulgaria, and Mexico and other Latin American countries.
The first European Embassy in Delhi to install Ganesha at its entrance was that of Ireland.

Satish Gujaral on the Old and the New

Sounding A New Start

Nirupama Dutt

The colours are brighter. The mood of the compositions is playful. Singing sparrows, chattering parrots, bleating goats, blowing horns and tinkling bells have found their way onto the canvases as the native returns to his studio from the oblivion of silence to the world of marginal sound.

``I am more keenly aware of the sounds around me,’’ says Gujral. ``I cannot decipher voices, but merely hearing my own voice has made a difference. I am more in control of my voice and able to use a varying pitch. And I think the lightness that I feel is reflected in my paintings, too. Earlier, I had to imagine the world of sound. Now I am well within it.’’

Gujral chooses not to label his works and also makes no intellectual pretensions. Each work has resulted from a mood that in turn had evolved from an aesthetic experience. The ultimate expression is a celebration of life.
But the celebration is in no way superficial. It has its roots. Roots that run deep into a tradition of art. ``Artistically, as I grow older, my adoration for craftsmanship is becoming more intense, as does my search for a new identity,’’ says Gujral. ``For the past few years, I’ve been trying to re-establish the lost link with the Indian kalam (Gujral’s metaphor for old Indian styles). It is towards this direction that I seem to be turning to in this phase of my life. I seem to be looking more and more towards our tradition of miniature painting.’’

Gujral has been fully aware of the dangers of addressing the past. There’s a certain risk of seeming pretentious or repetitive. But the artist argues, as though with himself: ``Rejection of the past is worse than the imitation of it. I am not much attracted to futurism. All this futuristic talk of the new century or, still more, the next millennium, leaves me cold. The future has nothing to give you. It is you who builds the future. And what you build the future with is your past.’’

It is the dilemma of a creative person who belongs to a culture that has a rather heavy burden of traditions. There’s a hesitation that borders on fear the fear of referring to traditions, lest one is entrapped in them. ``No, I believe this to be absolutely wrong,’’ explains Gujral. ``The reward in harking back to the past is that by doing so, one gets an identity. And this can be had in no other way. Before me was the example of architecture. Architects stopped using the features of our great monuments of the past: the domes, the arches, the decorative details. These were shunned like the plague. The result was the architecture of today which has no identity. I tried to violate these rules by using domes and arches. They were made fun of an I was called a `pseudo’. But these lived to see acceptance.’’

His experiments with architecture made him bolder when he returned to his paintings choosing the way of the Indian Kalam, with its emphasis on detail, its decorative elements, its realism, and an exquisite order of craftsmanship. These paintings follow a style that is to be seen in his canvases of the past decade and have yet a great emphasis on detail as well as the joy of working minutely in the cult of a craftsman of yore. Not just the paintings, his granite sculptures, too, which are very modern in form and yet embellished with the fine work that comes from tradition. ``One of the casualties of modernism has been craftsmanship,’’ laments the artist. ``In the name of abstraction, workmanship was cast aside.’’

But what about his own experience, for abstraction is very much a part of his creative journey, and it is evident even in his present work? ``Abstraction, yes. But not at the cost of workmanship,’’ emphasises Gujral. ``I have never surrendered to this temptation. I started, in fact, with figurative work. The Partition paintings stand testimony to the fact that I know how to draw. In later years, just as a poet breaks lines to infuse them with rhythm, I mixed abstraction with reality. The point is that faulty language does not make poetry. A faulty drawing similarly, cannot get away in the name of abstraction.’’

Coming to the new thematic elements in Gujral’s work, which reflect the joy of hearing after a long silence spanning over six decades, one cannot but ask him this question. No matter how tormented he was by his disability, yet if it were not for this, he may never have been an artist.

Gujral is quick with a reply: ``Sure, I wouldn’t have been an artist. I would never have gone to Lahore’s Mayo School of Arts. Like any other middleclass family. Mine would have liked to see me in a profession that earned me a good living.”

Satish Gujral on the Partition

Days of Freedom

Satish Gujral recounts the traumatic days of Partition and the paintings born out of the experience to Nirupama Dutt

It takes times for the images to crystallize in the mind and move onto the canvas. More so if one is right in the midst of the catastrophe. So it was with Gujral who thus recalls the holocaust: ``With unceasing catastrophes as the backdrop, millions were moving. With frightening regularity, the stress would be accentuated, much like the scratchy interruptions in an old movie, which blur the vision and distract the mind yet keep alive one's awareness of reality by giving way occasionally to short, clear footage.''

It was five years later that the artist gave one of the most memorable paintings on the theme: `Days of Freedom'. There is just the suggestion of the health in the background and two figures shrouded in shawls sit outside, their entire being distorted by grief. The hands of one figure are concealed and eyes covered. Yet, the twisted lips shriek out a silent scream. The hands of the other figure are exposed—one stretched out and the other holding back with the taut muscles and the bulging knuckles bearing witness to the humiliation.

``In August, 1947, I came back to Lahore after completing my course at the JJ School of Arts, Bombay. I was all set to open a Graphics' studio to provide multimedia training. My father was a member of the Constituent Assembly. With the Partition, his home constituency having fallen on the Pakistani side, his membership was transferred to Parliament of the new dominion of Karachi. My parents and all other family members were in Karachi. I was in Lahore with the old family servant, Partap, as companion,'' recalled Gujral seated at the long banquet table in the beautiful dining room of his redbrick mansion at Lajpat Nagar.

What was Lahore like then? ``It was burning. It seemed that nothing would be left of it. When Lord Mountbatten visited Lahore in the third week of July,5 per cent of the inner town and 1 per cent of the total city had been destroyed. Half the Hindu population had already fled. Many had just gone to drop their families and valuables on the safer side for no one knew where Lahore would go. In July, Jawaharlal Nehru had said the Ravi river be considered the boundary line so the Hindus continued to stay in Lahore,'' said Gujral.
But with the advent of the blood-soaked August, it became clear that Lahore would go to Pakistan. Gujral said, ``Things flared up and Hindus were fleeing with what they could on their heads. I decided to move too but to the interiors of Pakistan, my village Jhelum. Since there was no money with me, I asked our servant Partap to go to the railway station with our bags and I would arrange for some money and join him there. That was not to be. For whoever went to the railway station never came back as it was the scene of the worst killings. That was the last I saw of Partap.''

Gujra, made his way to the Lajpat Rai Bhawan, which was some three to four kilometers away from his home to meet Lala Achint Ram, a friend of his father's and also the father of Vice-President Krishan Kant. ``His home was overflowing with people who had moved there from other parts of the city. Lalaji was making forays into the subrbs to bring people to safety. The DAV college hostel had been converted into a refugee camp of sorts overflowing with some 50,000 people,'' Gujral remembered.

From that day Gujral's education had begun in human misery: death, destruction and desolation. The next eight months he spent with his father in rescuing abducted girls and taking them across the border. ``Every time we were able to rescue a girl, we drove down straight to Amritsar or Jalandhar. The tragedy was doubled when these girls would not be accepted by their families,'' said the artist who was to be nicknamed in the next few years as the Painter of the Partition.

Partition was the theme of the paintings Gujral did from 1947 to 1950 working with intensity and passion. Uma Vasudev commented thus on the work of this period, ``The material for his inspiration was at hand; the disaster of the Partition of India and its attendant personal tragedies for a multitude of uprooted people. This was no drawing room art. It hurt – could suffering be so inevitable? It offended – could man do this to man?''
Canvas after canvas, he relived the pain of the worst kind of bloodshed in history. `Mourning', `Return of the Abducted', Dance of Destruction', The Rehabilitated' and `The Condemned' are the very well-known works of these three years. He then went to Mexico and the sad experiences of these days followed him and were reborn with heightened intensity and a breakthrough in the form in works like `Snare of Memory' and much later `The Shrine'.
Years later Gujral wondered on contemplating on the Partition paintings whether the element of despair was induced by his experience of the Holocaust or whether it was the trauma of his own inner compulsions. He grew up speechless and ridiculed in a world which has little care for the deaf and dumb. Gujral's answer to his own query was that these works were born of his own compulsions within for no external happening could have triggered them. But what comes closer to the truth is that he internalized the external and thus these paintings of the partition were born.

Feminine Fables

Kanchan Chandra celebrates feminine mystique , writes Nirupama Dutt

The torso is a much-celebrated form in sculpture since ancient times in both classical and folksy traditions with the unclothed human figure worked out in perfect proportions in a symphony of harmonious beauty. One of the most famous torsos of the Greek Hellenistic period is that of Goddess Aphrodite. It dates back to 4th century BC. The torso is worked out in fascinating positions in the tradition of Indian iconography. Seeking inspiration from the allure of the headless busts, painter Kanchan Chander has used this form to make a contemporary statement, both as an artist and as a woman. There is an amazing simplicity as well as delicacy as she tackles the monumental proportions of the female bust.
In her creative journey, this artist moves through layers of experience to celebrate the feminine mystique. Born in Delhi’s Karol Bagh, Chander got a chance to study art in Germany and Chile as her father was in the Indian Foreign Service. Later she got a scholarship to study printmaking at Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris. In 1993, she got a British Council fellowship to visit art institutions in London and study contemporary art. The exposure provided to her abroad, Along with an intense Indian experience, has gone into shaping her work. Chander seeks forms from Shakti and then moves to the experience of motherhood, which is both personal and universal.
In the female torsos, she address both sexuality and fertility – the female energy that shapes the world of Indian textiles in her art. ``This happens because I have been translating the femainine experience in my works,’’ says Chander. ``It is amazing to see the trouble women take to search out these embellishments from shops tucked away in narrow lanes. For many women, adorning the self is power.’’Her recent torsos are worked in silver and gold leaf on painted canvas. In these works she reaches out to a fine abstraction from within the figurative form.
She has also been adventurious in the frames and supports for her paintings. When she renovated her home, she did not feel like discarding the doors and windows. And these became props for her paintings. Her painted windows and doors were a complete sellout. ``But I did not repeat the exercise because just in case they had remained with me, how would I have stored them,’’she says with a laugh. Yet another of her experiment which has come in for a log of appreciation is painting on thakktis or wooden boards which are still used as slates by primary school children in remote areas.
Flor Chander, the aesthetic experience is never at odds with her social responses. Art for her cannot exist in a vacuum and both the creator and the creation are placed in a given social situation. Yet as a woman, she shows the openness of the post-feminist times in which she does not shy away from reclaiming the skills which old granny knew so well. Thus the brilliant poetry of her sequined cow by the vivid blue river or beads which clothe her torso.
Here is an artist who celebrates feminity in form and content: the painter of the new century who is not apologetic for being a woman and painting like one. As her friend and collaborative artist Helen Geier puts it: ``The ebbs and flows of Kanchan’s life have spilled over in her work, both consciously and subconsciously.’’ The outcome is as pleasing to the eye as it is to the mind.

On Manjit Bawa in better days

'Me Elephant, He Dog': Manjit loved playing the showman , says Nirupama Dutt

Master painter Manjit Bawa strikes a pose with muse Ina Puri, both dressed in gala white --striking against the vivid red of a painted canvas. The caption to this story in a national daily goes thus: ``Me elephant, he dog.’’

Now what could the matter be? Perhaps the reference is to the year-long controversy in which Manjit’s apprentice, Mahender Soni, alleged that he had painted many of the master’s paintings. Manjit had kept a staid silence for long, only choosing to break it now that his recent show of drawing and paintings at Maurya Sheraton has been received with unprecedented enthusiasm.

The Tamasha of Indian Art

Artists, for they deal a lifetime in human emotions, are closer to the felt rather than the cerebral. Our artists give a fine display of it well into their silver-haired years. Take the inimitable
Abba Husain who spent a fortune just trying to prove a point of fetish with `Gaja Gamini’. Then there is Chacha Satish Gujral who pouted unhappily when the NGMA didn’t put up a retrospective in honour of his ----birthday. A before Checni (elder sister in Malayalam) Anjolie Ela menon had actually cut through a woman’s torso-breasts, navel et al ---in delicious sponge and chocolate icing at her 60th birthday bash. Given this merry scenario, Bhatija Manjit Bawa can get away cavorting with current muse Ina Puri.
Mirth apart, it is Manjit’s talent as a painter and draughtsman which causes one to dismiss what he has said, to see what he has drawn. Everything is achieved in minimal form, with great economy of line in his special style-- the outcome of a lifetime of struggle with form and medium. An apprentice can assist in it, he can also make pale copies but the credit for the form is with the master painter. Coming at a time such as this, the exhibition just crushes the controversy. The importance of being Manjit Bawa lies in the fact that his work has to be seen, not heard, to be believed.

When the cows came home

His journey began with the cows of Dhuri, a small town in the Malwa region of Punjab. ``My father was a timber merchant there and he used to regularly patronize the Goshala. So I learnt to love for animals early enough,’’ recalls Manjit. A slump in his father’s business made them move to Delhi where his father worked as a construction contractor. ``My father would always bring home an interestingly shaped stone or a piece of wood. Thus I learnt to be aware to shapes.’’ He studied in Delhi Polytechinc’s School of Art but went there first to be a model to his older brother who was studying drawing.
``A tall gangly youth with a turban on my head, I used to feel shy among the artists. So I’d doodle in my sketchbook as I posed for them. These sketches interested my guru Abani Sen. Bengalis dominated the art scene in Delhi. I would often be sniggered at for being a Punjabi and dreaming of learning art. But I was determined to show them. When my show at Calcutta some three years ago was a great success, I felt I had done my Master Babu proud,’’ he says. Well, that’s Manjit all over for you--happy as a child at making a point.

All you Need is Love

Talking of his early days, Majnjit says, ``In the late fifties, I started cycling through the plains and hills of India -- a great experience. Come holidays, and I would start my cycling expeditions aimed at seeing new sights and bringing them home in my sketchbooks.’’ In 1964, he did an overland journey from India to England and taught painting at the Institute of Adult Education there and also worked as a silkscreen painter, evolving new techniques. After returning, he worked in the silk screen workshop which he established at the Garhi studios for many years it was here that he started attracting notice for his painting and befriended artists like J. Swaminathan, Krishen Khanna, Paramjit Singh and Arpita Singh, friendships that lasted a lifetime.

``If one is to look for a turning point in my career, it came with the November 1984 riots which disturbed me as much as the killing of innocents in Punjab by terrorists. In life, I started singing
Sufi poetry that spoke of love for all. Instead of painting hatred, I started painting love,’’ recounts Manjit. Thus it was a new coming in Sufi robes. It was also when corporate funds flowed into contemporary art. Manjit Bawa’s art, as well as his colourful personality, stood out. Soon he was the painter to look for after Husain.

Did he have to pay a price for being a celebrity? ``You see there is always a price. One wants to be known a little more and then a little more and before one knows, one is caught. However, my hotel in Dalhousie always remained a fine retreat after an overdose of socializing. And some things never changed. I still like to wash my clothes myself and all through I took care of my physically challenged son who was born deaf and dumb. My son also taught me patience, which is crucial to an artist. I have never talked of this for I do not like to draw sympathy,’’ says Manjit.
Another much-envied aspect of his life are the pretty women who have surrounded him all his life. Blushing, Manjit says: ``You see an artist cannot escape women. They are the buyers, promoters and critics.’’ Ina Puri, who has him by his painting, chips in, ``That’s all a thing of the past and now there is only one woman.’’

In their pact of art and more, she is the youthful and supportive anchor he needs and she is quite right when she declares, ``I am the woman behind Manjit’s show.’’ The difference is showing for sure.
January 11, 1999
Wishing Manjit Bawa Well
The critical medical condition of celebrated painter Manjit Bawa at the peak of the art season has cast a gloom in the art circles. City artists wish him well and recount his achievements to Nirupama Dutt
The past two decades that saw a major boom for contemporary art in the country have in a way had painter Manjit Bawa as a central player. The talented painter made long strides in achieving a celebrity status home and abroad, crossing over from pure art to a showmanship of a kind that such fame usually entails. Controversy surrounded him in the past few years, as there were accusations against him for hiring junior artists to do his works. However, Manjit continued painting and showing, inaugurating events in his silk kurtas and pashmina shawls, singing Sufiana songs and cooking Punjabi food at Lohrhi and Baisakhi festival dos and winning over feminine hearts even though he had stepped into his Sixties.
The painter born at Dhuri in 1941 always had very close ties with Pun jab and the city and many of his friends, associates and admirers were shocked when he was moved to a super-specialty hospital in Delhi following a brain haemorrage on December 17. Put on life-support systems, his condition remains critical still and many are voicing their concern for one of the finest painters of our times and wishing him well. Chandigarh-based painter Balvinder, who also belongs to Dhuri, says: “Manjit is one of our best painters and we hope that he will recover and get back to his work. He was the first to make the flat use of colour, inspired by the traditional miniatures. He remained an inspiration to many and he was a trendsetter.”
Manjit’s figurative work and use of bright colours is daring and impressive. A master colourist, his figures of Krishna with the flute or eating a banana short him into recognition. He was at equal ease painting acrobats as well as animal figures ranging from the mighty lone to the holy cow and the docile goat. Deeply disturbed by communal rioting and violence, he, however, never reacted directly but chose the artist’s way by showing harmony of the animal world or gentle figures culled from folk legends and myth. Commenting on his work and persona, theatre director Neelam Mansingh says, “I wish he comes back to his own. I got to know him at the Bharat Bhavan at Bhopal in the Eighties. He would sing Sufi songs and was the life and soul of any party. His paintings too are very special and he is one of the leading artists of our times.”
Painter Malkit Singh, who spoke to the painter’s older brother Manmohan Singh, says: “The news is very depressing. I have had a very fond association with him. He is a great painter and also a great friend exuding Punjabiat.” .Manjit is a major painter and one wishes him well.” Yes, one does hope that Manjit recovers and gets back to his painting and singing. Of course, his cooking too and one waits for a Lohrhi when he will play chef with aplomb with his favourite menu of ‘Machhli Amritsari’, ‘Jallandhari Chicken Tikka’, ‘Punjab Kadhi’ and much more.