|
Magazine
Perfect frame
|
The founder of Gallery Chemould, Kekoo Gandhy participated in the modern art movement for 20 years. NANDINI BHASKARAN profiles the man — both an active member of the art scene and a witness and contributor to the rise of the Progressive Artists' Group.
|
Forty years ... Gallery Chemould
FOR most people, the artist starving in the garret is a cliché. For Kekoo Gandhy, he was the perfect candidate for rescuing! Nurturing the incipient contemporary Indian art movement in Bombay during the late 1940s and early 1950s, in his uniquely "selfless" way, as daughter Shireen says, Gandhy helped focus the spotlight on a landscape speckled with new names. What he offered artists was space and succour, a keen eye and an impresario's skills — apart from a blithe heart. For Gandhy, who in 1963 established Gallery Chemould, the first sponsoring art gallery in Bombay, art and altruism go hand in hand. Such as when, in the early 1960s, he recognised Laxman Shreshtha's potential: Gandhy found the artist drawing meditatively on the rocks at Land's End, Bandra, where he walked every morning, and took him under his wing.
Gallery Chemould's 40th anniversary show, entitled "crossing generations: diVERGE", spread over the expanse of the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Mumbai, in December, evoked awe among viewers — and some bewilderment from him. Kinetic art and installations stand cheek by jowl with paintings by Raza and Tyeb Mehta. Pushpamala's ironic photographs of herself, depicting the nava-rasas in sepia, mimic the studio format of olden times to question the notion of the classical. Nalini Malani's poignant video satire on Ravi Varma's doe-eyed, ornately clad women, punctuated by muffled sounds of pain, draws attention to the Godhra riots.
Sipping coffee in an anteroom of the NGMA, Gandhy goes back to a time when artists had no patrons and there were no exhibition venues in the city. "I saw myself as an intermediary between wealthy patrons and the artists," he says. Artists could show only at the Taj, the Town Hall or the University Convocation Hall, and the walls had to be covered with hessian before any pictures were put up. Gandhy, whose family ran a cosy little frame shop at Princess Street that once had, as manager, the late Roshan Kalapesi, expert in design and handicrafts, would display works by Jehangir Sabavala, Krishen Khanna and others. Husain's "The Dolls' Marriage" was the first work by the artist that Chemould Frames sold; it fetched $35,000 in the United States a few years ago, remembers Gandhy.
At 83, Gandhy, whose 5-foot 11-inch frame betrays only the slightest stoop, and Khorshed, his unwavering wife since l944, epitomise a grace and greedlessness that belong to another time. Sudhir Patwardhan, senior figurative artist who first came into contact with them in l975-76, says that "theirs was another world, compared to the artist-gallerist relationship today with all its pressures. With the Gandhys it was but an extension of friendship". Steadfast relationships define Gandhy. K.H. Ara and Raza, founder-members of the Progressive Artists' Group and among the first to burst onto the modern art scenario in Bombay after Independence, "were lovely human beings", he cries ecstatically. The poet Nissim Ezekiel was, for a while, Chemould's gallery manager. Through the 1960s and 1970s, lean years for Indian art, the gallery and frame shop would pay artists like Tyeb Mehta, J. Swaminathan and K.C.S. Panicker a monthly retainership and buy their work — even if it remained unsold.
THE PERFECT FRAME:PRESENTING MODERN INDIAN ART
Kekoo and Khorshed Gandhy ... 1944
Likewise, artists recall how the Gandhy benevolence could set off a chain of serendipitous circumstances: Bal Chhabda, who started out wanting to make films — his first film had an artist as its central character — says he would never have become an artist had he not met Gandhy at the frame shop all those years ago, and through Gandhy, vitally, Husain, who urged him to try his hand at painting. In the 1980s, Khorshed held a series of exhibitions of tribal art, which had never before been put on par with contemporary Indian art, because of its apparent repetitiveness. Her showcasing of Warli paintings by Jivya Soma Mashe helped bring a rich repertoire of untold stories out on canvas and led to the publication of a book under the gallery's own imprint.
While all things ethnic became a buzzword in the 1980s, "Maharashtra for Maharashtrians", which had been the motto of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement of l959-61, continued to politicise the Bombay art world. Parochialism was not "filling artists' stomachs", as Gandhy puts it, "it was keeping artists isolated from patrons". Though he was very exercised about this, he adopted a non-confrontationist approach, what with Gandhiji, J.R.D. Tata and Dadabhai Naoroji being strong influences. When a member of the Bombay Art Society, a premier institution for art promotion, accused him of not employing a single Maharashtrian, he thought it wiser to listen to him, or else, "one wins the argument, but loses the man".
Away from the world of wine-and-cheese openings and quickie television interviews, Gandhy's public-spiritedness draws him to causes like a moth to a candle. A quixotic zeal pervades these involvements, which have beckoned ineluctably. Mehlli Gobhai, abstractionist, points out how art for Kekoo is not "an effete, ivory-tower" enterprise away from the hurly-burly of the streets. Gobhai, whose exhibition at Chemould happened to coincide with the Bombay riots of December 1992-January 1993, observed how Gandhy flung himself into the task of mobilising support for the victims. He has since been a facilitator on the Mohalla committee, which former Police Commissioner Julio Ribeiro is actively involved in, to mediate between the police and the people in spreading communal harmony.
From Kekee Manzil, his gracious home in Bandra, to building alliances in a mohalla, how does he straddle both worlds? "I've lived all my life surrounded by high-rises, but now I have many friends in the slums," says Gandhy. "It enhances me when they put their faith in me, and I can share my ideals with them and try to make them shed petty differences." The 30 or 40 facilitators on the Mohalla committee meet once a month. Khorshed testifies to her husband's "infinite energy and heart power. He can win over people's confidence by his sincerity."
Says Jehangir Sabavala, whose family association with the Gandhys goes back several generations, "Kekoo is a do-gooder in the best sense. His politics are a little waffly, but his heart is in the right place."
"Many say I have a finger in too many pies," says Gandhy — the Narmada Bachao Andolan, keeping Bandra beautiful, the post-Godhra riots, fielding the "right" candidate (Acharya Kripalani versus Nehru's nominee, Krishna Menon, for the l962 Lok Sabha elections) and, of course, the Emergency.
"My focus is to get people together," he says, attributing his success in this to his belief in Moral Re-Armament (MRA). The Gandhys first got involved in this offshoot of an Anglo-Christian movement, emphasising spiritual self-improvement, in the early 1950s. MRA, he says, trained him to "treat opponents, not as enemies, but as human beings who have been brainwashed. We have to cultivate them and have a good relationship with them, if we are to have a better world."
It was intriguing, nevertheless, for former Shiv Sena MP Mr. Madhukar Sarpotdar, who played a controversial role in the Bombay riots, to encounter Gandhy's earnestness. "When we met Mr. Sarpotdar at Behrampada, the scene of major rioting in l993, he thought we were not going to listen to his point of view, only that of Shabana Azmi and others like her, who, according to him, only dabble in grassroots social work," says Gandhy. "So I said Khorshed and I would visit him at his house for a talk." When they did go — an elderly, elegant couple — Mr. Sarpotdar could only ask, in some amazement, "Why are you doing this?"
Khorshed has an answer when she remembers the Emergency. "When something is imposed on me like this," and she brings her hand down on the table, "I go berserk. We just had to fight it." Gandhy's best friend, Sadanand Varde, minister of education in Maharashtra in the 1970s, was put in jail, as were many others. "We harboured Mrinal Gore, leading social activist, in our son Adil's room for over 15 days," Khorshed says, her face animated by the memory. Her father-in-law did get suspicious and was worried the police would come. Ms Gore was safe at the Gandhys', but was arrested soon after she left them. Another warm memory Khorshed has is of organising a "prayer meeting" during the Emergency, "since no other kind of meeting was allowed." It was a Saturday afternoon. Sarvodaya leader Jayaprakash Narayan was very sick then, having to undergo frequent bouts of dialysis. "Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhiji's grandson, was with us." They put out an announcement in the newspapers about a meeting at Sophia Wadia's home at Theosophy Hall. "About 100 people gathered," she recalls.
Prayers from every religion were chanted: "It was our way of adding a subtle political colouring to the meeting." Many causes have coloured the Gandhys' life, the impetus being the instinct to help. "I have Khorshed, four lovely children and Kekee Manzil," says Kekoo. "The least I can do is to work for those less privileged. I feel you don't deserve all this until you put in your bit."
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
|
