Notes from the Past

Nine years after his death,artist Arpana Caur and her husband Ajeet Caur,founders of the Academy of Fine Arts and Literature,are hosting an exhibition in his memory at Delhi’s Academy of Fine Arts and Literature Folk and Tribal Arts Museum. The exhibition,which begins on August 11,will feature his works and the paintings of many of his students like Durga Bai and Suresh Kumar Dhurvey,whose art is part of the Museum’s permanent collection. “We have been collecting Gond art since the 1980s and artists like Suresh Kumar has been sponsored by our fellowship,” says Arpana,who is known to have done collaborative works with tribal painters from the Warli and Gond discipline.

“The Gond artists are accomplished and have distinctive interpretations of their own cosmos,” says Roma Chatterji,the curator of the exhibition. The paintings,which are executed in the typical Gond manner,however have modern influences. Chatterji points out,“Their works are moulded perhaps by the modern institutional spaces in which it first took shape. These artists,unlike many other folk artists acknowledge the ‘signature’ of the individual artist.” Likewise,the Gond artists have moved beyond telling only the mythological tales through their art; they have instead,included contemporary issues like the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and the troubled relationship between man and nature in their works.

For instance,Durga Bai’s painting of the gas tragedy depicts two people running away from a gas leak in a naïve drawing of a factory. The gas cannot be seen but it is deadly and the artist has tried to show this through a fine mist of black dots that appear to follow the retreating figures. Mansingh Vyam has come up with a thought provoking interpretation of the man-nature dichotomy: he depicts a large angry snake nestled in the trees ready to spring on the vehicles trundling through the hills down below. Clearly,a warning to not treat our environment lightly.

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