For all the mythology that has come to be an integral part of K.G. Subramanyan’s oeuvre, those not in the know, would be surprised to find that the artist is not a believer. “I am not a spiritual person either but I do feel that there is some special thing in all human beings. We have beastly power, which when channelled into positive directions, humans become humane. We made so many plans of channelling beast into non-beast but it didn’t work. So throw all these plans of being human and just be human,” says the artist who turned 90 this year in February. To mark the occasion, Naveen Kishore’s Seagull Foundation for the Arts has organised a year-long celebration of his art by travelling his exhibition of latest works across the country.
Curated by R. Sivakumar, the exhibition opened in Vadodara and has since travelled to Delhi, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Kochi, Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata. Currently on at National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru, the exhibition’s last stoppage would be Santiniketan in February 2015, the institution where he studied under stalwarts like Ramkinkar Baij, Nandlal Bose and Benode Bihari Mukherjee.
At times the nonagenarian could and at times couldn’t travel with the collection that comprise drawings with ink on handmade paper, gouache on oils and reverse painting on acrylic sheets. On to these, he has reconstructed mythology by merging it with the life and times of today in a palette ever so bright. A couple in an animated discussion share the space with a Devi-like woman trampling a snake. In ‘Hanuman 1 and 2’ (reverse painting on acrylic sheet), he shows two monkeys occupying half of the space and Hanuman carrying the mountain containing Sanjivani, the other half. Approximately 90 such works that make up this travelling exhibition were done in the last two years. “I am a compulsive doodler. I have to keep on doing something or the other,” says the veteran artist fondly addressed as Mani-da in the art world.
Mythology crept into his work unconsciously. “Many years ago, when I was living in Jangpura in Delhi one morning, I saw a well-built woman beating up a man. He had apparently stolen something of hers. A little later I saw a woman trying to control a herd of buffaloes,” recalls the artist adding that he doesn’t draw directly from mythology but by associating life with it.
And though he has straddled different mediums — from paintings, murals, illustrations, toys and writing — they are all bound by a common thread of a gripping narrative. Working with different mediums is as much part of art-making according to him and each medium leads the practitioner to a different discovery. And what did he discover from artists like Baij, Bose and Mukherjee, who have been designated as National Treasures. “I was 20 and Bose must have been 60. So I valued him and his art from a distance and even Baij. I used to go around sketching with him but I wasn’t friendly with either because of the age gap. I was close to Benode Bihari Mukherjee. I got interested in murals because of him and in my last year in college, he allowed me to work with on a mural in Hindi Bhawan in Santiniketan.”
