Baij and the bronze...
RANA SIDDIQUI
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Sporadic events mark the birth anniversary of legendary sculptor Ram Kinkar Baij.
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SUPERB Works by Satish Gujral and Arun Kumar displayed at Lalit Kala.
This year is the birth centenary year of the legendary sculptor and painter of Kolkata, Ram Kinkar Baij (1906 - 1980). He may be regarded as one of the greatest masters of his time, and for some art students, he is even the subject of a doctorate, but hardly any city, including Delhi, thought of paying tribute to him.
Most writings on Baij are in Bengali. Lalit Kala, though, did print a three-page monograph in English in 1980 after his death. Jaya Appaswamy who was Baij's student, penned it. And the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi, published a group catalogue featuring Baij, Rabindranath Tagore and Nandlal Bose in 1990. Now Santiniketan and NGMA, Delhi, are reportedly going to take some initiative next year.
Among those who remembered Baij this year in the art fraternity in Delhi, and even dared to do something about it, are just two people. The first is a postgraduate student of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Anindya Kanti Biswas. He has also cleared his JRF in Landscape Study of Ram Kinkar Baij, and another is gallerist and curator Renu Modi. Biswas and Modi mounted their respective exhibitions of paintings and sculptures at Lalit Kala Akademi in September and December this year, respectively.
A daring step
Renu Modi's all-sculpture exhibition, the second in Delhi, was a daring effort. With the help of Madan Lal, a curator, she organised her first such exhibition in 1995, which had 21 young sculptors from all across India.
This exhibition, titled Bronze, which concluded this week, traced the history of sculpture in bronze, and its use by different sculptors. This extremely interesting exhibition brought under one roof stalwarts like Satish Gujral (Bulls), Sakho Choudhuri (Bird/ Forms), Baij (Head/Harvestor), K .S Radhakrishnan (Crossing the Fire, Terra-Fly), Sarbari Roy Chowdhury an expert in portraits (Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Siddeshwari Devi etc.,) Somnath Hore (wound), and many more. It also gave ample space to painter/architect turned sculptors and young sculptors/ first timers who have given new dimensions to bronze.
For instance, if Dhananjay's Singh's `Man' had an international approach, Krishna Yadav's Banaras in bronze was spectacular. Arun Kumar who works in a toy company used bronze in huge toys. Even Riyaz Komu, known for his urban themes on canvas tried his hand at it and so did video artist Navjot Altaf. Famous tribal artist Jaidev Baghel has been included in this so-called `mainstream show'.
Curated by Madan Lal, this exhibition took him and Espace gallery's Modi almost two years to conceptualise and mount. Modi even priced the works between Rs.1 lakh and 60 lakhs because "so far sculptures were highly under-priced despite their value and skill. This show will set a good price tag for sculptors too," she believes.
Biswas's almost unsung art show contained works from famous as well as obscure artists from Kolkata, including B.C. Sanyal, Sankho Choudhry, Surid Mukhopadhyay, Sarbari Roy Chowdhury, Jatin Das, Akhil Chandra Das and so on. The show had an original work of Baij titled Deepdan which is considered the first India's first abstract sculpture. Biswas also printed what he claims as the "first ever complete book on Baij in English" titled "Ram Kinkar Baij: The Seminal Artist". The book, he says contains his 11 years of research on Baij that includes rare and so far unmentioned works of the stalwart. For instance, a relief panel titled Sarawati with four hands. Out of which one hand holds a parrot symbolising Yakshini from the South of India. It also has Baij's last and unfinished sculpture symbolising two men trying to woo a woman "which is kept in a dilapidated condition in the sculpture department of Santiniketan".
"Despite a few publishers who claim to be great art lovers, they refused to publish this 100-page book on Baij at the last minute. So I spent my own money and got 300 copies printed," claims Biswas.
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