Vivan Sundaram: An artist who truly lived his ideology and responded to crises of the times

The desire to explore that Sundaram pursued, and that gave India some of its most significant and probing artworks, saw its end on Wednesday, when the artist died at a Delhi hospital, where he was admitted following a brain hemorrhage earlier this month. He was 79. “Vivan’s passing has left a deep chasm,” adds Malani.

Artist and friend Gulammohammed Sheikh, who was also his teacher at the Faculty of Fine Arts at MS University, Baroda, where Sundaram studied painting from 1961 to 1965, recalls how he made an impression early on. “From the time Vivan came to study in Baroda in 1961 to now, he remained a close friend, comrade in arms in our artistic pursuits and committed artist to humanist causes. He was one of the founders of SAHMAT, an artist collective championing the cause of a multicultural India he nurtured to become a voice of the artist community. With a vast body of work, from the drawings of Pablo Neruda’s long poem ‘Heights of Macchu Picchu’, to paintings of socialist themes beside the massive and most evocative installations, including archival reconstruction of the Sher-Gil family, not to mention the powerful videos, his work always blazed a new trail and has left behind a legacy rarely matched,” says Sheikh.

Extremely sad to share that Vivan Sundaram has passed on . He was one of the finest artist, activist I have known for over 35 years . His demise is a big loss to the art world and also to the creative cultural resistance . 1/3 pic.twitter.com/79SDr9nHn4

— Shabnam Hashmi (@ShabnamHashmi) March 29, 2023

Born in Shimla in 1943, Vivan’s father Kalyan Sundaram was chairman of the Law Commission of India from 1968 to 1971, and his mother Indira Sher-Gil was sister of noted artist Amrita Sher-Gil, and daughter of Umrao Singh Sher-Gil, son of Raja Surat Singh of Majithia in Punjab. Though Sundaram had vivid memories of growing up around art, his artistic inclinations and vocabulary were informed by his own experiences, amidst which was the cultural renaissance he experienced as a Commonwealth Scholar at Slade School of Fine Art in London in the late ’60s. Influenced by the pop art movement pursued by American artist R B Kitaj, whom he closely interacted with, he also witnessed the 1968 students’ protests across Europe against capitalism, consumerism and imperialism, and participated in political meetings.

“I am a child of May ’68, the kind of freedom it gave,” he stated in an interview to The Indian Express in 2018. “Something in that historical moment urged me to continuously question and shift, both thematically, politically and linguistically, in terms of art. Connecting with people from different disciplines has always informed my work,” he said.

Married to art historian and curator Geeta Kapur, in the early ’80s, his shared desire to address issues in the urban milieu and present contemporary narrative and figurative art saw him band together with stalwarts such as Bhupen Khakhar, Sheikh, Malani and Sudhir Patwardhan for the seminal exhibition titled “A Place for People”. Two paintings from the exhibition – ‘Guddo’ and ‘People Come and Go’ – featured in Sundaram’s first major retrospective held at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Delhi in 2018.

Fellow SAHMAT member, photographer and friend Ram Rahman, who also designed a few catalogues for Sundaram’s exhibitions and whose photographs the artist incorporated in some of his projects, recalls his “almost childlike enthusiasm through which a fiery temper would sometimes explode”. “As a teen, my first memory of Vivan was him dancing on a table with Srilata Swaminathan in the house being built for Satish Gujral by Raj Rewal in the late ’60s-early ’70s. In the later years, he stayed often in my loft in the Fulton Fish Market in New York. For me, Vivan’s energy was very focussed on collaborative projects and always had a political or social edge.”

We express our deep condolences on the demise of Vivan Sundaram, a brilliant artist, creator, and intellectual who was a committed and active supporter of the cause of the working people and for democratic and secular values. pic.twitter.com/rGeAZMsaey

— CPI (M) (@cpimspeak) March 29, 2023

The personal was not alienated from the political. If in the 1991 ‘Engine Oil’ series he referred to the US-led war in Iraq to gain control of oil resources, the 1993-2014 mixed-media installation ‘Memorial’ acted as a shrine for the victims of Bombay riots. In the 2017 collaborative art project ‘Meanings of Failed Action: Insurrection 1946,’ Sundaram recalled an incident where the Indian Navy stood up to the British Raj. “Some people say my art is topical, I am always responding to crises,” he stated in the 2018 interview.

While his early career saw painting as a dominant medium, Sundaram’s forms were as wide-ranging as his engagements with his surroundings. His 1998 installation at Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial and Museum – that presented an alternative view of history – was arguably one of India’s first site-specific, architectural-scale installations. Umrao Singh Sher-Gil’s late 19th-early 20th century photographs were reinterpreted by him in montages, and the two-part ‘Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self-Portrait in Letters and Writings’ (2010), edited by him, was a retelling of his aunt’s pioneering life and art. In the 2015 collaborative theatrical presentation titled ‘409 Ramkinkars’, he revisited works of arguably India’s first modernist sculptor Ramkinkar Baij. “Apart from his own art and the numerous mediums and issues he explored, his engagement with the art world was at multiple levels. I don’t think anyone engaged with as many aspects in the same manner, or stood up to authority as he did,” says Pathwardhan, who had known Sundaram closely since the ’70s.

An advocate of interdisciplinary arts, in 1976 he founded the Kasauli Art Centre to organise artists’ camps, international residency programmes, seminars and theatre workshops. Bose Krishnamachari, president of Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF), recalls Sundaram’s elation following the announcement of the launch of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. “He was an artist-curator-finder-observer who was a huge supporter of the artist community and wanted artists to work together,” says Krishnamachari. A participating artist in the first edition of the Biennale held in 2012-13, his installation ‘Black Gold’ re-imagined the ancient port of Muziris with discarded potsherds from the archaeological site. Incidentally, the ongoing edition of the Biennale has his 1972 set of drawings ‘The Heights of Macchu Picchu’ that expresses solidarity with oppressed populations. “He could not visit this edition of the Biennale though he really wanted to, but he is here. He is going to be here forever, as an artist, friend, thinker and someone who constantly offered guidance,” adds Krishnamachari.

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