Cast in time

So even when KS Radhakrishnan,Baij’s long-time disciple and a noted sculptor himself,was handed over the responsibility to curate a retrospective on Baij by the Ministry of Culture on the occasion of Baij’s birth centenary in 2006,he took five painstaking years to put it together. As many as 350 of his works,including sculptures,paintings,drawings and graphics,covering six decades of his artistic journey,constitute the exhibition that opened yesterday at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai.

Titled “Ramkinkar Baij A Retrospective”,it is the first full-fledged retrospective of the artist being held at NGMA. Baij is regarded as one of India’s first modernists who set the precedent for modern sculpture in the country,and has created some of the most landmark public sculptures (his sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi and the bust of Rabindranath Tagore in Santiniketan are considered iconic,as is the Yaksha and Yakshi sculpture outside the Reserve Bank of India,Delhi).

This is also perhaps the first time an exhibition has attempted to contextualise the works as well as the artist. “This retrospective aims to help Indian artists of the generation after Ramkinkar Baij (he died in 1980) see,accept,reject,understand or misunderstand the master creator,” says Radhakrishnan. To facilitate this,the exhibition boasts photographs from personal collections capturing Baij at work and at leisure,documentations in the form of letters from his students and his preparatory notes for his monumental sculptures.

For example,the breakdown of his creative process behind the creation of the sculpture of Yaksha Yakshi and the bust of Tagore have been shown through photographs and working notes. “A look at the process gives you a sense of his style of work. Sometimes,the final sculpture may not have any resemblance to the real person he has drawn inspiration from,his sculptures often didn’t adhere to traditional human anatomy. He had his own sense of aesthetics,an independent,original sense of structure,” Radhakrishnan adds.

There are drawings called study of hen,horse,goat and baboon,and his renowned works on the tribal people of Goalpara village speak of the artist’s rootedness. Santhal Family,one of his famous works installed in Santiniketan,and other such similar structures have been presented in the form of photographic blowups amidst texts by R Siva Kumar and KG Subrzamanyan,both of whose publications on Baij are part of the retrospective.

At the inauguration event that took place on Tuesday was present one of Mumbai’s significant artists Akbar Padamsee,Chief Secretary of Maharashtra Jayanta Kumar Banthia also attended the ceremony along with NGMA Director Rajeev Lochan and Curator KS Radhakrishnan. The retrospective,which has already concluded in Delhi and Bangalore,will be on display till December 16. After this it will travel to Kolkata.