A veteran calling...
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Veteran Bengal artist Jhupu Adhikari displays his works in New Delhi after a long time. RANA SIDDIQUI catches up with the man who once beat M.F. Husain in an exhibition
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A work by Jhupu Adhikari.
APART FROM Triennale, New Delhi has been witnessing a spurt of art events and artists who made a name for themselves some years ago, then chose solitude for their artistic pursuits, despite knowing that these days art fraternity is often in media glare. Now many of them have come back with a bang. One such artist is a veteran from Bengal, Jhupu Adhikari.
Adhikari's exhibition of 57 drawings and paintings, Delayed Harvest, now on at Gallery Alternatives at DLF Qutub Enclave, Phase I, has made an appearance after a gap of several years on the Delhi horizon. It contains all that he is known for; a slice from every day life of the people, be it a fruitseller, a washerwoman from Rajasthan, worshippers in temple, terrorist, pavement school or his famous clown, symbolising human endeavour in all circumstances. His admirers missed his colourful realistic works blending his trademark geometrical figures. They also regarded his absence as annoyance with the increasingly commercial attitude toward art and the art fraternity's less serious concern towards the medium.
Adhikari attempts to hide it, "Not really, I have been exhibiting my works in Kolkata and I also had some important commitments there." But probe a little and he gives in.
"I went to see Triennale and was disappointed. It was a gimmick. Great works art either must have a visual appeal or they must convey some message. But it seemed as it conveyed something only to the artist who made it. I could see such shallow approach even in senior artists' works. When I was working as a designer, I was asked to add some gimmick to my works, now the same is a happening in art works too."
Picasso inspiration
Adhikari considers Picasso his inspiration. He is among the first-generation artists who had his art training and graphic design in England in 1951. He recalls, "There was a teacher in London who showed me the works of Picasso. He said to me that when you look at a picture, it always has two dimensions, one frontal and another from the side. Then it crept into my mind that Picasso also made a deliberate attempt of making two-dimensional paintings. That idea changed my entire view towards the making of art and invariably my works started imbibing two-dimensional approach." The seasoned artist does not mind if many address him as designer-cum-painter. "Why should I mind? I am a trained designer and I worked in an advertising agency for a long time."
Only a few know that this 78-year-old artist's exhibition of paintings along with M.F. Husain and others at All India Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata in 1948, was the first national-level exhibition after Independence. "I won the first prize and a gold medal in this exhibition and Husain got silver medal. I sold my two paintings for Rs.100 and 50 and Husain too sold one for 100. Those days it was a huge amount for me as I was a student," he recalls cheerfully.
Keeping with his habit of painting from every day life, Adhikari brush will next carve out some tsunami images. "I will come back to Delhi by this year-end with those images," he promises.
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