The national capital no longer experiences the summer drought in the art world as it used to about a decade back when, during this time of the year, the number of exhibitions running in the city would reduce to a trickle, leaving writers such as yours truly gasping for oxygen to carry on their work. But even in this world of plenty, a completely immersive exhibition that leaves the viewers fundamentally affected at some level, is still not a regular feature. However, one such immersive experience is currently running at the Kamladevi Complex of India International Centre, featuring the astounding oeuvre of an unsung artist, Brij Mohan Anand (1928-1986), who created prolificly yet did not show his works in exhibitions.The exhibition, titled after the book on the artist, “Narratives for Indian Modernity: The Aesthetic of Brij Mohan Anand,” is a terrific glimpse into the genius of the man whose family discovered his well-preserved oeuvre — numbering nearly 1,500 and covering almost every genre of the two-dimensional art — by accident, and waited for the right time to take it to the public. Who was Brij Mohan Anand? The exhibition curator, Alka Pande, answers it succinctly in a collection-worthy poster put together to introduce the Amritsar-born Delhi artist/ illustrator to a population who has so far remained unaware of his existence as an artist, let alone his mastery of several media. Writes Pande in the poster, “An imaginative, sensitive and gifted artist, Anand lived his life with what might be perceived as an inflexible tone and tenor. His scratchboards offered a polemical commentary and a highly personal perspective on a range of neo-colonial conflicts, from the cultural politics of the Cold War and the Vietnam War to India’s assumption of nuclear power... Other work across a wide range of media including landscapes, both pastoral and dystopian, portraits, pen and ink compositions, watercolours, poster designs and book covers for novels, suggest both a tangibly modernist sensibility and a Post-Independence zeitgeist.”It’s important to understand the summation Pande offers of the artist as his works give a glimpse of India that one sees amply in other media of creativity, such as films and literature, of a newly-Independent country, but not much in visual arts. When I share my impression of the works, Pande agrees, and says, “Yes, this kind of visual imagery is rare in the work of artists of the same period. There is distinct anti-Westernism, which he portrays very well.” Even though the leading artists of the era were painstakingly carving a truly Indian idiom of modern art, overt political reactions, like the ones seen in the works of Anand, were either missing from most of their oeuvre or were highly muted. Of all of Anand’s works, his scratchboards, underscoring the reality in stark black and white, are the most political. The messages range from opposition to imperialism and neo-colonialism, to protest against the Cold War and the Vietnam War, each with understated strands of general social and gender equality, equal opportunities for all, and such like. The two wars that India fought in the decade of 1960s (one each with China and Pakistan in 1962 and 1965 respectively) too resonate in the works of Anand, with one “Holocaust” canvas bearing an uncanny resemblance to Surrealist works of 1920s Europe.“I must say that I’m the last entrant in this project. I was approached to write the foreword to the book by Aditi Anand, co-authored by Dr Grant Pooke of the University of Kent. I told them I couldn’t do it without completely understanding his work, and when I saw what they had to show, I was totally astonished. Such amazing range of works, and so little is known about him!” exclaims Pande as she leads me to his drawings that astonish because the hand that made them was not trained in an art school. The number of media that Anand worked in, and masterfully, is indeed, jaw-dropping. One takes time to get over the brilliance of Anand’s scratchboards, but soon gets immersed in the rather kitschy covers for Hindi pulp fiction books of his time. Gulshan Nanda (1929-1985), the popular novelist of his age many of whose stories were adapted as successful Hindi films, is said to have insisted on Anand designing his book covers or else, he thought, his books wouldn’t sell well, informs Pande. The covers of Nanda’s popular novels designed by Anand, such as “Kati Patang,” “Main Akeli,” “Patthar Ke Honth,” “Gaylord,” “Sukhe Ped Subz Patte,” etc, are on display as also those by other writers such as Aadil Rashid’s “Ek Ladki Ek Samasya,” Shaukat Thanvi’s “Sharaarat,” and Jamnadas Akhtar’s “Kashmir Ki Beti, among others. The authors of the book on Anand believe that the financial security offered by work for publication houses, which was much in demand, coupled with the fact that his first exhibition, held in Kashmir in 1947-48, was not well-received and was, in fact, interrupted, may have led to his reluctance to hold exhibitions of his art. His family, whom one can interact with if visiting the exhibition, shares that it was common for people to walk away with works for free.The exhibition, on till today, is an in-depth look at the creativity of Brij Mohan Anand, whose works have come under serious academic scholarship only now, courtesy the BM Anand Foundation, founded by Neeraj Gulati and the artist’s daughter, Kriti Anand. The latter says that the family would like to set up an archive of his works as he never wanted to sell. That would be a fitting tribute to a man who shied away from limelight.Follow@ARTINFOIndia
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