The Maharaja Suite

Malgorzata is Polish but lives in India,and her film on Norblin explores the six years that the artist lived in this country as a court painter. Titled Chitraanjali: Stefan Norblin in India,the documentary was screened yesterday at the India Habitat Centre. This is arguably the only cinematic effort to understand the artist’s work in India.

Norblin landed in Bombay in 1941,after the September Campaign,Germany’s invasion of Poland,with his wife Lena Zelichowska,a famous Polish actor of the ‘30s. After being commissioned by the royal families of Morvi in Gujarat and Ramgarh Raj in Patna,he held an exhibition in Bombay in 1944. One of those impressed with his work was Maharaja Umaid Singh of Jodhpur,who roped in the artist to create artwork at his palace.

The hour-long film fuses the grandeur of the royal structures with Norblin’s modernist and art deco style,thus painting a bigger picture of Indian art through a series of interviews serving as a informative backdrop. “It’s like a fairy tale. We didn’t want to have an eye-candy film but something that would provide a background into the Indian art deco style as well as an insight to Norblin’s work in India,” says Malgorzata. Norblin left the country with his wife and son in 1946 for San Francisco and in 1952,committed suicide at the age of 60.

Commissioned by the Polish embassy in Delhi,Malgorzata and her crew worked on the film for two years and even managed to shoot the last leg of the restoration of the artist’s works in Jodhpur last year. Erstwhile royal figures such as Gaj Singh II of Jodhpur and Vijaykuverba of Morvi as well as the late artist’s son provide their perspectives in the film. A prominent interviewee in the film is German scholar Claus Ullrich Simon,who is perhaps the only one to have documented Norblin’s work in India. In the film,Simon shows photographs of Norblin’s “conservative portraits” of its royal family – these images are not publicly available.

Norblin’s body of work in India comprises 70 paintings,most of which depict scenes from Indian mythology,especially the Ramayana ,referred to by scholars as “Norblin’s Ramayana “. Lithe and languorous figures of gods sprawl over the walls of rooms. “At the time,India was considered to be a part of the Orient and that’s how Norblin saw them,” says the director,explaining the unique features of Indians in Norblin’s works.

Chitraanjali: Stefan Norblin in India will be screened at Delhi International Arts Festival on October 29.