Three master painters of Indian Modern Art — S.H. Raza, Sakti Burman and Anjolie Ela Menon — have come together for the first time with artwork that resonates the past that they have lived through and the present that is here. The show, opening at the Art Musings Gallery in Mumbai on February 4, will have the three maestros display the maturity that’s inherent to their artwork and style.
The artworks showcase commonality in the way the themes are deeply rooted in Indian tradition. Having lived in Paris (even Menon spent some time there very early on in her career), they all share certain sophistication and an unmistakable refinement in their artistic approach and style, which has been polished over the years. However, the differences are equally wide in how their respective French influences reflect on canvas, mostly visible through their individualistic approach towards the use of colour, signs and motifs.
Raza’s works are a series based on Bharat and Nav Bharat, and bring forth the mystic aspects of Hindu philosophy once again to the canvas, but what impresses the most is the improvisation that the artist has achieved in his style over the years. It is amazing to see how the pure geometrical forms have evolved and made space for coloured spaces in between, while the artist carefully aligns them on the canvas. Similarly, the bindu has become a more prominent icon — a sacred symbol that stands on its own.
“These works are an amalgamation of my 50 years of experience as an artist,” says Sakti Burman, who combines his past impressions and memories with the modern value system, playing with association and disassociation, and reality and unreality at the same time. While the imagery remains closely associated with the portrayal of traditional Indian Gods and Goddesses, it also mocks and questions their existence, drawing parallel comparisons with modern elements. For instance, in Durga and Nature Abundance, the artist questions the traditional image of Indian Gods by drawing a parallel between Durga and Ganesh (the elephant God whose rides a mouse) and a child riding an animal from the feline family. “It’s a question that I have been asking myself for a long time,” he says.
Burman explains that the recent paintings brings together his memories of his life in two countries, France and India, where the artist lived in the Bengal of pre-Independent India, which is now Bangladesh. These memories have been passed on to the canvas unconsciously, but in spite of that, they don’t evoke a sense of longing or express any kind of frustration of losing home and loved ones at a young age. Instead, they speak of a positive optimism, a dreamland where everything is attainable.
“It’s about things that I have seen or learnt while travelling around the world. An artist can never leave the past behind. It’s always with him, alive in the present, and unconsciously makes its way into his work. It’s real as well as unreal, just like a dream,” says Burman.
The large variety of experiences, signs and symbols have also made their way into the works of Anjolie Ela Menon, who incorporates diverse cultures, with traces of Greco-Roman and Byzantine traditions. But unlike Raza and Burman, her works, such as the Item Girl, generate a creative friction by juxtaposing the classical icon and the popular image. Menon presents a spectacular large work Bird in a Golden Cage, as well as a series of small paintings in her trademark style. “In order to be successful, an artist must establish a genre of his own,” says Menon, who will be exhibiting her artworks for the first time with Burman and Raza.