P opular contemporary artist Paresh Maity’s show opened at a time when the city was still limping back to normalcy on Monday. Maity, who was staying at a hotel in Royapettah, found his way to Lalit Kala Akademi on Greams Road and back without major hiccups. But many serious collectors couldn’t.
I meet him the next morning. His bags are packed and he’s all set to return to Delhi, and his studio. Maity, typically, is dressed in flamboyant violet trousers, a black faded coat, a beret and a chain with a palm-size silver pendant of a lion around his neck. Before heading to the airport, he decides there is just enough time for a quick visit to the gallery.
In the car, Maity and Pramila Lochan of Gallery Sumukha, which is organising the show as part of its 20th anniversary, talk about how the protests affected the show. Maity nods sombrely, but is more interested in a jallikattu poster stuck on a passing auto. “I find Chennai very similar to Kolkata; people are very grounded, and rooted to their traditions,” says the recipient of the Padma Shri in 2014, whose works are part of the collections at the British Museum in London; Rubin Museum, New York; Commonwealth Institute, London; and the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi.
The conversation eddies around his disconnected questions: ‘How far is Madurai from here?’ or ‘What does OMR stand for?’Maity might be a globetrotter (he just got back after a solo show at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore), but he has not frequented this part of the country — his last show in the city was at Art Chennai six years ago.
The current exhibition includes a repertoire of canvases and gigantic installations (that only fit into containers) done over a span of four decades. The installations had to be brought in five trucks, he says, as we alight from the car, only to stand face-to-face with an eight-and-a-half-feet-tall installation of a face made using 4,500 golden bells.
Inside the gallery, his works — watercolour paintings, oil on canvas and charcoal — have an old-world charm. Boats, river banks, and dupatta-clad women remain recurring elements, and primary colours dominate many of them. These are remnants of visuals that Maity was exposed to as a child, growing up in scenic Tamluk in West Bengal. His first tryst with art was moulding wet clay after watching artists making sculptures of goddesses Kali and Durga.
With no artist in the family, and no role model to follow, Maity paved his own way. Even as he worked on getting his lines right, he continued to maintain an impressive academic record.
“That’s when my father’s colleague suggested I become a doctor. Those days, it was either engineering or medicine; art was not considered a medium to earn a livelihood,” he recalls.
Passionately stubborn, Maity joined the famous Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata, a good 200 kilometres from his home. With no money to spare for accommodation in the city, he travelled for eight hours to and fro, to attend college. “Things have changed now, India has carved a space for itself in the global world. The art scene is strong and striking,” he says.
As a student, Maity exhibited his works in galleries across India. His popularity earned him an invitation from Hyderabad University for a Master’s degree. He spent two weeks there before a popular gallery in Delhi asked if he would hold a solo exhibition. With 25 paintings rolled into a modest bag, and an ambitious spirit, he caught the Andhra Pradesh Express to Delhi, where he later joined College of Art, New Delhi, to continue his studies. Ever since, the Capital has been his base.
Looking back, Maity realised that as he shifted from one place to another, his style of painting transformed. “In my formative years, I was inspired by two very famous water colourists from Britain — Joseph Mallord William Turner and John Constable. By the time I settled in Delhi, my works became more figurative,” he says, sounding genuinely surprised.
Inspiration comes easy for Maity, and so does the resilience to complete the works — a few of which take over a year to perfect. With no television, mobile phone or the Internet, Maity has managed to keep his routine immune to distractions.
A stickler for discipline, he starts painting at dawn, and wraps up work at the first sign of dusk — a routine that he followed even as an artist-in-residence at Rashtrapati Bhavan in 2015.
Art, he says, is a 24x7 profession — extending even as part of dinner conversations with his wife and artist Jayasri Burman. “I dream art, I think about art all the time,” he says. “For me, art is life.”
The exhibition is on at Lalit Kala Akademi till February 10.
At the show
- The exhibition traces the evolution from landscape and figurative art to installations.
- It will feature works done by the artist when he was just a teenager and those as recent as 2017.
- Chennaites, unfortunately, won’t get to see a quirky installation called ‘Procession’, in which he has used the spare parts of a 100 old and worn-out Royal Enfields to create the body of ants, and placed them on large wooden logs.
- The city will also not get to see trunks with portraits of film stars (including Rajinikanth) painted on them.
- To view them, log on to www.pareshmaity.in
