There is little space to move around. I try to capture a pair of sculpted terracotta feet and a stone-carved shark on my camera, and accidentally step on a bunch of paper birds. Outside, National Award-winning (1992) sculptor, P.S. Nandan, chisels on an almost-finished life-size stone sculpture of Ganesha — a 10-month-long project which has already been booked by a gallery. His garden is covered with wild bushes, crumbling terracotta animals, and giant rocks. These will soon be given a form, which Nandan will only know once he is midway through the carving.
A few feet away, inside Cholamandal Artists’ Village, is sculptor S. Nandagopal’s house with a spacious front porch; and next to it is artist Reddappa Naidu’s apartment. I am told that he passed away just a few months after the housewarming was done, in 1999. J. Sultan Ali’s modest house has been sold to a family of non-artists. So have been a few other houses in the Village, given 15 out of the 30 artists who formed the Village are no more, and a few have moved out — like S.G. Vasudev, who now lives in Bangalore, and V. Viswanadhan, in Paris.
At the next turn of the street, State Award-winning (1980) artist M. Senathipathi is busy painting on a five-and-a-half-feet by three-feet canvas. He has just finished with the first layer of white; the outline of Jesus’ face is visible. It’s a newly-commissioned piece for a private company, says his son S. Saravanan, whose workplace is just a stone’s throw away. Their artworks are mounted on the walls like calendars, and stacked inside rooms like old newspapers. Outside the house, of course, they are worth several lakhs.
Placing his brush down on a table crowded with acrylic tubes, paints, palettes and scalpels, Senathipathi turns the pages of a thick bound book: Cholamandal, An Artists’ Village, published by Oxford (2004), to point at a black-and-white group photo — a throwback to the summer of ’66. He stands poker-faced between S.P. Jayakar and K.R. Harie (both of whom are no more), and behind Nandan. This was soon after the first batch of artists had moved into the Village, which he recalls, was an uninhabited stretch of land with plenty of casuarina trees and a fishing village in the backyard. Now, it’s an array of finely-built buildings and the beach is not within easy access.
At this point, one must know that the legend, the then principal of Government School of Arts and Crafts (the oldest art institution in India), K.C.S. Paniker, had already formed the Progressive Painters’ Association in 1944, which managed the sale, exhibition and collection of the contemporary artworks of its members. “Most artists back then hardly pursued what they had graduated in. Many took up medical drawing, became art teachers, art directors in films, or did odd jobs, as they couldn’t make a living out of art. There were simply no buyers,” says Senathipathi. What they needed was a regular income.
Paniker rebelled against an office routine and commercial job, and instead encouraged a lifestyle where an artist would get enough time for creative pursuits, and the money to make it. “Thus was formed the Artists’ Handicrafts Association, wherein the artists would work on handicrafts — woodwork, ceramics, pendants, batik, leather works and so on — for at least two hours a day, and buy paints and canvas with the money from handicrafts sales,” he says. Once they had saved enough, the group of 30 artists acquired 10 acres of land on ECR on April 13, 1966, for Rs. 4,000 each and divided it among themselves for individual plots. That’s how Cholamandal came to be.
The idea of a secluded colony for artists was a flourishing trend in the West. It helped them stay away from modern influences in order to express their thoughts better in art. Their technique and approach to art were similar to what was prevalent in New York, Paris and Mexico. What started as an experiment to promote modern art became India’s largest self-supporting art colony, with artists from all over the world, including people like Japanese sculptor Hiroshi Mikami, Paul Beckman and others, stopping by for residencies, camps and workshops.
“Back then, there were no roads, bus service or electricity. I used to walk for eight kilometres to Thiruvanmiyur, and get a bus from there to go to my college in Egmore,” recalls P. Gopinath, the youngest member in the founding group. The other option was to cross the Buckingham Canal and reach the nearest town to get a jutka or horse carriage. The first bus route 19C from Adyar to the Village and back opened in 1967. “We used to survive on Rs. 100 or less a week. In the evenings, we would go to the fishing village, enjoy a catamaran ride, help fishermen catch fish, and bring home a sack for free. Sometimes, on the full moon nights, we took our dinner down to the beach. Now, of course, there are restrictions,” adds Gopinath, who stays in the house opposite Reddappa’s and close to the open-air cultural centre on campus.
The artists led a Bohemian lifestyle. Word spread, and the Village was even featured in The New York Times in 1998, as one of the “most successful in Asia”. The members began to travel abroad for shows and also exhibited within Cholamandal in makeshift asbestos galleries. They encouraged young art enthusiasts (like Sharan Apparao of Apparao Galleries and Geeta Mehra of Sakshi Art Gallery) to set up their own spaces, and were written about by popular art critics Clement Greenberg and Richard Bartholomew.
Today, the past shows up in the sculptures left behind by International artists in the 60s and 70s and old studio foundations. Artist G. Latha, daughter of the late graphic artist K.S. Gopal, recalls hanging out with her sister (G. Priya) and Uma Shankar (senior artist D. Venkatapathy’s son), under the ancient Banyan tree, where artists gathered for evening conversations. There were colours and canvases everywhere, she says. That, plus the dragonflies, bees and birds, the Cholamandal coastline, the sound of welding, hammering and firing in the morning, stand inspiration in the works of a few like Jacob Jebaraj (son of Richard Jesudas). “Growing up here, I just knew I would grow up to be an artist, and I did,” says Saravanan.
