Illustrator SD Phadnis’ cartoon chronicles captured in a book

“While working on this book, I evoked memories of my childhood in Kolhapur when drawing was not just a hobby but an obsession,” says Phadnis, who completed his early education in Kolhapur. After finishing school, he enrolled at JJ School of Art where he pursued the commercial arts course. “Until I joined JJ, I used to think that cartoons do not have any creative potential. But once I embraced it as a full-time career, I realised it’s an immortal art,” says Phadnis, who began contributing as a freelance illustrator to various Marathi magazines while he was still studying. “The payment was decent pocket money at the time,” recalls the artist.

The big break, he says, came in 1952 when he designed the cover for Marathi journal Mohini, which is part of the book. The colorful creation depicts a man and a woman standing at a bus stop. While the woman is wearing a red color sari with prints of several cats, the man is donning a blue shirt with numerous prints of rats. The work translated into many more assignments. In 1954, Phadnis shifted to Pune and started contributing not only for several Marathi journals such as Manohar, Tarun Bharat, Rigved, Hasavnuk and others, and even Maharashtra state board text books.

The artiste, who admires works of painters and illustrators such as Mario Miranda, Norman Rockwell, SV Kirloskar and Vasant Sarvate, says that entering the field as a cover designer worked in his favour and made him stronger as an artiste. “As covers of the magazines do not have captions, I had to communicate my ideas solely through visuals,” he says.

In 1965, he held the very first exhibition of his cartoons at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai. Since then, the exhibition, titled “Laughing Gallery”, has travelled across India and to the US. In 2006, he was invited to participate in “India at a Glance” cartoon exhibition at Frankfurt, Germany. Two of his cartoons were selected for the exhibition, which were later printed in a journal titled Cartoons From India. The first cartoon, which is a comment on the strict professional hierarchy in the Indian government sector, shows a police constable — who’s carrying bags full of grocery items in both hands — saluting his officer with one of his legs. The second cartoon portrayed a woman completely engrossed in riyaaz on a taanpura. Sitting in front of her is a small kid, trying to pacify her with chocolates. A few of Phadnis’s cartoons also made it to other international magazines and journals namely Salon International De La Caricature (Montreal, 1982), EPD Weekly (Germany, 1997) and Witty World (USA, 1997). These illustrations, too, are a part of the book.

This story appeared in print with the headline Cartoon Chronicles