The late Shiavax Chavda’s work graces Jehangir Art Gallery once again this week — the first showing of the master painter’s work in Mumbai after nearly 25 years after the retrospective held posthumously in 1993. The Dancing Line , an exhibition of Shiavax Chavda’s sketches and paintings continues until early next week.
Chavda could be considered a painter of movement — but not just movement. His paintings depicted men and women in dance — across communities, styles and countries. They emerged from his travels across India and South-East Asia — a series of images that captured not only the specifics of a particular style, but also the culture, the joy and the purposefulness of the dance.
One of the lucky artists travelling abroad pre-Independence, Chavda followed his J.J. School of the Arts Bachelors with further training from the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. Here he was taught by a number of artists who greatly impacted his style – including Vladimir Polunin, connected with Diaghilev’s company Ballets Russes. Chavda’s training further continued at (what was then) the St. Martin School of Art in London and the Academie de Grande Chaumiere in Paris. Returning home with a multitude of influences, Chavda decided to travel across India and Indonesia and found himself keeping a sketchbook travelogue of all he saw. In his sketches are temples, and fauna, masks and sculptures, and of course, dance.
Chavda had a deep association with dance – as deep as his association with the short-lived but extraordinary Progressive Artists Group. This association was excavated and presented most recently by critics and curators Nancy Adajania and Ranjit Hoskote in their 2016 exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai — No Parsi is an Island , which documented the contributions of Zoroastrian artists in India to the country’s visual culture. As they state, Chavda’s association with dance deepened with his marriage to Khurshid Vajifdar, who along with her sister was a known exponent of Indian Classical Dance. He was particularly drawn to Hindustani classical music, Bharatnatyam and Odissi. His relationship with his brother-in-law, the writer Mulk Raj Anand resulted in a long and wonderful collaboration in the art magazine, Marg . In their essay, Adajania and Hoskote say that “Chavda was present across a wide spectrum of contexts and visualities. He acted as illustrator for books on dance and anthropology, volumes of children’s stories, and magazines. His portraits of musicians, dancers, and sitters at large suggest a practice calibrated midway between salon and gallery.” Chavda also worked with filmmakers, working on costumes, headgear and architectural detailing for the 1966 film Amrapali , directed by Lekh Tandon and starring Vyjayanthimala and Sunil Dutt.
Chavda, who drew his last works in 1990, left a long legacy of work – of solid draftsmanship and deep curiosity. While working on the set of Tantric murals he made for the Tata Theatre in Mumbai (still up today), in the words of the late art critic Dnyaneshwar Nadkarni, “Chavda read through all the useful books on that cult. In spite of his advancing years, he did not hesitate to get up on a scaffolding and do the painting himself...Few of us realise what an achievement it is for the now departed painter.”
The Dancing Line — revisiting Shiavax Chavda is ongoing at Jehangir Art Gallery, Kala Ghoda until October 30.
