Romancing the Easel

While Delhiites were admiring Vivan Sundaram8217;s faux cityscape made with garbage at Photoink Gallery last month, at Delhi Art Gallery Roobina Karode was sifting through the artist8217;s early works. She carefully went through Sundaram8217;s canvases from his pre-installation era to choose one that would be representative of his present works and decided on a 1981 oil, The Passage. It is a painting within a painting: beside a brush-holding Sudhir Patwardhan is his canvas The Train, while a woman slides through a crimson road. 8220;It foretells Vivan8217;s future direction in oblique ways,8221; says Karode. Sundaram8217;s canvas and 21 others are part of an exhibition at Delhi Art Gallery and a companion book titled Frame. Figure. Field.

At a time when experimentation with multiple mediums is gaining prominence, the exhibition celebrates easel painting and traces its progress in India. There are FN Souza8217;s Nude and MF Husain8217;s untitled canvas with its faceless woman 8212; the human figures looming large, as Karode says, 8220;in its iconic, emblematic presence8221;. In the younger generation, Sovan Kumar has been attributed with radicalising the easel format as a form of social critique. His canvases like Niamgiri depicts flat hills in Keonjhar district where local tribes have tried to resist bauxite mining by industries. This is the return to the origins, to the romance of the easel.

The exhibition is on at Delhi Art Gallery till November 20. The book is priced at Rs 2,500.