With a steady flow of children's books on art in the last couple of years, there's something to write home about. Works like Eye Spy - Indian Art , How Poppy grew happy , Mamta Nainy's A Brush with Indian Art , Raza's Bindu and Amrita Sher-gil Rebel with a paintbrush are trying to create a discourse around the subject.
Anita Vachharajani, whose Amrita Sher-gil Rebel with a paintbrush hit the market a few months back agrees, “I see so many books around me that are on Indian artists now than there were 10 years ago. And this is not just because writers are more inspired now to write them. It’s because there has been a sort of awakening in the market, where publishers are investing in creating Indian content and distributors and bookstores are helping in pushing the books out there. Also there are many means of non-traditional marketing now, which makes it easier to put out a small product and find a small-but-committed market for it,” says the Mumbai-based writer, who is particularly grateful to her publisher Harper Collins for the quality and for putting in a number of art works.
The children's author will be in Bengaluru soon to participate in the second edition of the Neev Literature Festival from September 27 to 29. It's the first time Anita has taken up an artist as a subject. The book traces the journey of Amrita Sher-gil, one of India's nine national treasures, and is accompanied by Amrita's paintings and illustrations by Kalyani Ganapathy. Also included are paintings by European masters who influenced Amrita, photos taken by her father Umrao Singh Sher-gil, historical information and engaging crisp boxes related to the times she was living in.
The book's Bengaluru launch will take place on September 29 at Atta Galatta in Koramangala. The writer was floored by one of Amrita Sher-gil's most celebrated works, “Group of Three Girls”, and felt a desire to tell the story of the making of its artist to the young readers. There was also another concern that always gnawed at her mind. “In India we rarely talk about our artists democratically. We expect people, especially young children, to take it as the gospel truth when we tell them that a particular artist was ‘great’. I wanted to explore this a bit further, to talk about the ‘greatness’ of an artist not as a monolith, but as a structure that is made up of many tiny, interesting parts. I am curious about the things that an artist saw, read, heard and liked. All of it determines why he or she thinks or works in a certain way, and this is the message I wanted to share with young readers, that each of us, and artists particularly, are a product of our experiences.”
The author has tried to present a 180 degree view of the artist starting from her parents’ wedding to her death at the age of 28 in Lahore. Anita tells the story in a chronological order and without the use of any heavy-duty words. Before this book, she has translated Gujarati folk tales into english, written stories for The Puffin Book of Bedtime Stories , and also collaborated with her husband Amit Vachharajani to create Amazing India which portrayed 29 Indian States through their arts and crafts.
Anita feels that her latest venture is different from all her previous outings. “This is the first time I’ve written about an artist, so in that sense this book is different from the other children’s books I’ve written. But I genuinely enjoy writing books that are a bit all over the place – visually delightful, and crammed with interesting information and lovely tangents. Amrita Sher-gil: Rebel with a Paintbrush is very much a product of that approach.”
The book is neatly designed with different narratives running parallelly. “There’s Amrita’s story, there are her paintings, there is the layer of the background / historical information, there are photos by her father, and there are illustrations by Kalyani. They are all knit together seamlessly by Kalyani’s book design. I would love for my readers to engage with any or all of the layers – artistic or otherwise – and take what appeals to them the most.”
Being a book about an artist, the visual element became even more crucial and Anita had to plan the book accordingly. “I believe that the visual layer of a book is the first ‘text’ a young person reads. So it has to be delightful, alluring. But this book is about an artist, so there was a further challenge. It needed an illustrator who could do two things: make the book a visual delight, and yet, know when to step back and let Amrita’s paintings speak. That artistic restraint and an element of whimsy were both essential.” She discovered Kalyani Ganpathy, who not only executed illustrations brilliantly, but also ensured that they don't clash with Amrita's paintings in the book.”
