Painters From India

"She was free-spirited and committed to women's equality - not someone who would easily consent to a marriage arranged by her family in India"

"Nothing is more wearing morally, than a weak husband."

"Her triumph in the college Eisteddfod in 1914 prompted a burst of poetic creativity which has now been celebrated in the first ever collati0n of her verse."

"Bonarjee was also a supporter of women's suffrage"

"“Greater preference is accorded to sculptures and paintings created by artists attached to the royal courts over the centuries. Artefacts from rural and tribal India were outrightly dismissed as everyday objects, completely unfit for display in a museum. No one, with the sole exception of K.C. Aryan, realised that the illiterate and unknown craftsmen living and working in the countryside had nurtured our artistic and cultural heritage since hoary antiquity, and preserved it from getting lost for good.”"

"KC Aryan is singularly equipped in writing on them [folk bronzes], having lived, seen and collected many of the images on the spot and being a practising artist."

"K.C. Aryan (born 11 August 1919, died 2002), a Partition refugee from West Panjab, was an accomplished painter. He founded the Museum for Tribal and Folk Art in Gurgaon, still functioning today. He saved plenty of old paintings, sculptures and other arts & crafts objects for posterity by collecting them in his museum or donating them to more established institutions. In 1970, he presented to the publishing unit of Punjabi University Patiala a manuscript with illustrations for a book, 100 Years Survey of Panjab Painting (1841-1941). It was eventually published by the PUP in 1975, but only in mutilated form. The Senate Board of the University objected to the inclusion of one particular painting, and threatened that if it were published, the grant for the whole publishing unit would be stopped. The contentious painting, executed by a Pahari painter in the mid-19th century (whose name, as often in folk art, remains unknown), shows a topi-wearing Guru Nanak praying to Lord Vishnu. The Board took the Sikh-separatist line that that Sikhism has nothing to do with Hinduism, and that the Gurus are above the “Brahminical” gods. It is the same line that keeps the Sikh establishment from calling their central shrine, the Hari Mandir (“Vishnu temple”), by its proper name, hiding it behind the superficial designation “Golden Temple” or the Moghul term “Darbar Sahib”. It is also why in 1922 they threw out from the Hari Mandir the murti-s that had been worshipped there ever since Arjan Dev inaugurated it in 1604. Sikh identity as a separate religion, rather than as one of the many panth-s in the Hindu commonwealth, is based on a denial of history, and this requires a constant censoring of unwilling historical data: names changed, scriptures doctored, murti-s thrown away, the publication of a painting suppressed."

"The ordinary house was the habitat of the great painter himself, as he found no state or private patronage to give his collection the space and the care it deserves. Collecting he did out of personal passion for art and out of a sense of duty. He sensed how art that was an everyday feature of Indian folk life a century ago is now getting rare and in need of preservation for posterity. Art lovers and art owners were united in despising tribal and folk art, even throwing it away to replace it with more classical pieces."

"Unfortunately the contrast between the value of these collections and the shabby treatment they receive from the upper class and the authorities deserve a closer investigation and contemplation... This collection is large, tasteful, and greatly appreciated by art connoisseurs the world over. At the moment, it happens to be housed just next to the capital and the international airport. Any Minister of Culture in his right mind would first of all visit it and then promote this collection to show the world that particular facet of the many-faced Indian creativity. But this is not happening."

"K.C. Aryan was a productive painter himself. Twice his paintings drew attention from the authorities. A few years before independence, during a communal riot in the North-West Frontier Province, Muslims paraded a group of Hindu women naked. He depicted the scene. The British authorities feared it would stoke resentment among the Hindus, so he had to abscond from their searchlight for a while. Come independence, his community of Lahore Hindus was partly massacred and partly had to flee for their lives. In Delhi, near Kashmiri gate, they had to live as refugees. Aryan’s painting of the refugee camp was titled: “Freedom comes for us.” Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was not amused."

"Aryan points out how his father, the late painter KC Aryan, was the first to preserve and promote these unknown paintings from Jodhpur. He says, “Nobody knew of their existence. These large-size paintings were done by pujaris from Jodhpur, and not by painters in a conventional manner. They are so vibrant and have now become extinct."

"[It is] “a most deserving tribute to the unnumbered anonymous artists and artisans of our soil through the centuries. In it are manifest the creative genius and artistic expression of countless unknown potters, weavers, embroiderers, painters, sculptors and other craftspersons of this country ‘whose names and identities have been lost in the mists of time’ and whose artistry is comparable to, if not excelling, the best of its kind found anywhere in the history of human civilization.”"

"“This long neglect and wanton destruction of our folk and tribal heritage has been compounded by the unsavoury process of pseudo-intellectual distinction between ‘arts’ and ‘crafts’, or ‘fine arts’ and ‘decorative arts’. This led to a profound loss of repositories of rich ethnographic material bearing centuries-old expression and symbolism.”"

"Renaissance art has always been my favourite subject. The realism involved in it is a challenge for me not only as an artist but also as a priest. Subjects involving human beings have always been my core area of interest."

"Well, art is reality, art is a muse if it helps us to realise the truth. It is the major guiding element which helps you to realise the truth."

"Now, Indian contemporary art has come to a standard which is very serious and meaningful and it feels good that some of our artists are conducting their exhibitions in international cities. I was happy that this happened in London."

"Indian contemporary artists have not come to this standard. So I feel happy that I could present something to them. My work has a different meaning and something like this has never been done by any other Indian artist."

"One doesn't look at the quality of work, they see how much it fetches, how it earns. That's a sad thing. Money is not the criteria of art. Art or love is not a question of money. One should perceive these things at a different level."

"It is normal that I have done something significant and so have other artists. I have taken my work in such a way that it has been a success. But that is not the only thing which matters you see...it's the work which matters."

"For me, Bindu is a point where I concentrate, my energy, my mind. It has become like Bhagvat Gita, Swadharm and all that. You have to fix your energy on one thing and not ten things. If you go to ten directions, it's distraction of energy. I think one woman is enough"

"If you say Ram Ram Ram and Allah Allah Allah, you will get confused. So one god is enough. For me Bindu has never done the same thing. There is logic in every abstract form that I make. My work is like poetry and it should create a different atmosphere for the visitor. Poetry, literature and art seem simple but it is very difficult to understand it."

"I tell God that he has been responsible enough. Without him it wouldn't have been possible. Thanks to him I could achieve these heights."

"Installations are usually very mediocre. These new ideas are alright to promote themselves but I think real promotion can be done if they make good paintings or good sculptures."

"This exhibition is a sum total of all my experiences and all my research."

"I didn't become a French painter or a European one. I remained an Indian painter through the years. That was always in my heart and I am very glad that I was able to come back here again.""

"As an Indian, I remained convinced that the bhav or the feeling of a painting is important, and these put together, can make a good artistic expression. This is what I tried to do during my years in France."

"India is always in my heart and I put that in my paintings and sometimes in my dairies and letters."

"Young painters are amazingly involved in their own research and are coming into their own personal perceptions. There is great hope for the future of art here. We will be the most vital art expression in the world."

"I am very happy. My only ambition is that the quality of my work should go ahead."

"Razaji said that the title of the show is Vistaar and by that he means expansion. But Vistaar to me, when I look at his body of work, means expansion inside. As much as he has gone outside and spread his vibration, that much he has equally and as importantly, gone inside his soul, so that there is no difference between Raza the artist and Raza the person. And that is what makes this show really special."

"This sale represents records of every kind. The monumental work "Saurashtra" by Syed Haider Raza set a World Auction Record not only for the artist but for any modern Indian art in history."

"His works essentially, are "a fundamental research in pictorial format", linked with Indian thought and aesthetics, and influenced by European trends; but, at the same time "retaining the primary traits of Indian traditions."

"We are thrilled that this work will return to India as a fitting tribute to the artist and a celebration of art from this region."

"Well I spend my days reading, painting, thinking and meeting friends. It’s very pleasant. I’m studying Hindu thought, I’m studying Hindi poetry, my language is Hindi. I get up at 8 am… there’s no fixed routine… after 10 or 11 o’ clock my friends come and see me. A message has to be conveyed. It’s not only a question of doing research, what has to be done has to be conveyed to people so it’s interesting to see people who are interested in coming and finding out what I’ve been doing all these years."

"Everyone sees for himself, the artist also sees for himself. Others see where ideas coincide, or whether they agree or disagree. There is no binding, no forcing of things. It has to be a free association of ideas."

"To draw and paint is an elementary thing, it has to be done. But it can be a mental process, intellectual process, thought process. *It is a question of temperament of each artist, there are abstract painters, figurative painters, painters who work in silence or who don’t want to work at all, but they continue with ideas in their mind and in their soul. It’s very fascinating; it’s a vast area without rules or regulations."

"Sometimes I start with very little and it grows. Sometimes it grows up to a thing, and doesn’t continue further or it does continue further, which I call vistaar, or expansion, or developing the same idea into space or intensity. There’s no hard or fast rule you see. It happens."

"Amrita's life was more colourful than the bright colours she used in her paintings—this is a good look at it."

"In "Toward a Development of a Cosmopolitan Aesthetic""

"Amrita Sher-Gill: Art and Life: A Reader (page xvii)"

"My art is not a career, it is myself and I know myself best!"

"I cannot control my appetiate for color, and I wonder if I ever will."

"Towards the end of 1933 I began to be haunted by an intense longing to return to India, feeling in some strange inexplicable way that there lay my destiny as a painter."

"Europe belongs to Picasso, Matisse and many others, India belongs only to me."

"The life of Indians, particularly the poor, pictorially....with a new technique, my own technique...and this technique though not technically Indian, in the traditional sense of the word, will yet be fundamentally Indian in spirit."

"...was to interpret the life of Indians and particularly the poor Indians, pictorially."

"Traditions that were once vital, sincere and splendid and which are now merely empty formulae, [nor to imitate fifth rate western art slavishly] break away from both and produce something vital, connected with the soil, something essentially Indian."

"She was very fair and there was an expression of weariness in the lovely liquid dark eyes. Her little finely curved and red hued lips seemed like drooping rosebuds and were sealed as if it were in silence eternal....she seemed as if she guessed the cruel fate which had been meted out for her by the Rani and Rajah and her other rich but distant relations in whose hands she seemed a helpless toy."

"I am always in love, but unfortunately for the party concerned, I fall out of love or rather fall in love with someone else before any damage can be done."

"Modern art has led me to the comprehension and appreciation of Indian painting and sculpture. It seems paradoxical but I know for certain that had we not come away to Europe, I should perhaps never have realised that a fresco from Ajanta or a small piece of sculpture in the Musee Guimet is worth more than a whole Renaissance.'"