Art and the Man: In reminiscence of Okay Venkatappa

The third, a plain modernist constructing set again from the street and initially designed to face in the course of a synthetic island, is the Venkatappa Art Gallery (VAG), established in 1975 primarily to deal with the works of one of the celebrated artists of the erstwhile Mysore state. Many Bangaloreans consider that the pink constructing is in reality the VAG, however that form of mix-up is much less more likely to occur going ahead; final week, as a part of its golden jubilee celebrations, a swank, state-of-the-art VAG, renovated by the Brigade Foundation, reopened to the general public in the identical location.

But what do we all know of the eponymous artist? By all accounts, Okay Venkatappa (1886-1965), one of many foremost college students of Abanindranath Tagore, was variously irascible, eccentric, independent-minded, litigious, and a unprecedented painter, sculptor and veena participant.

His creative expertise – he got here from a protracted lineage of Chitrakaras, court docket painters patronised by the Mysore kings – was noticed early, by the Maharaja of Mysore, Nalvadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar, who urged the lad to hone his expertise on the Government School of Art in Calcutta. Arriving in Calcutta at 23, Venkatappa spent the subsequent seven years learning underneath Tagore, alongside friends like Nandalal Bose, the pioneer of contemporary Indian artwork, and Asit Kumar Haldar, one of many main artists of the Bengal Renaissance.

Like different artists of his era who grew up within the ferment of nationalism, Venkatappa strove to create a brand new paradigm of artwork that was resolutely “Indian”. But his reluctance to align himself with any creative faculty, his rejection of necessary commissions that didn’t, in his estimation, compensate him adequately, or interfered along with his creative fashion (he most popular working in watercolours, when oils, impressed by Raja Ravi Varma, have been all the fashion in Mysore), and his behavior of continuously neglecting his artwork for his music noticed him produce far much less work than his contemporaries. He might have pale into obscurity have been it not for the Irish poet and theosophist James Cousins (famously liable for nudging Kannada poet laureate Kuvempu into writing in his mom tongue after the latter solicited Cousins’ suggestions on his assortment of poems in English), who, taken by Venkatappa’s expertise, advisable him to Nalvadi’s brother, the Yuvaraja, in 1924.

A royal fee adopted quickly after – a sequence of bas reliefs for the Mysore Palace, with a studio within the palace thrown in as a bonus. Venkatappa accepted, however he was by then so deep into his “Ooty watercolours” part (throughout which he produced a few of his most interesting work) that supply of the reliefs was inordinately delayed. With the demise of Nalvadi in 1940, Venkatappa misplaced his most loyal patron. The new king, Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar, summarily dismissed the artist and evicted him from the palace. Furious, Venkatappa sued the Palace, however in useless. He produced no extra new work till his demise in 1965.

That the state authorities ought to have, regardless of all the pieces, arrange a gallery for his work 50 years in the past, is clearly a testomony to Okay Venkatappa’s relevance and affect as an artist. But go go to the VAG, and choose for your self!

(Roopa Pai is a author who has carried on a longtime love affair along with her hometown Bengaluru)