Artist: K.G.Subramanyam

K.G.Subramanyam

There are colours all over the world, red and green, blue and violet, sometimes dispersed, often overlapping, meeting each other in a blasé unison – and we see them, here and there, and everywhere. But these colours are not on the things, they are in the eyes that see. There, perhaps, are differences in the eyes of the artists too – as a result of their dissimilar origins, the variety of the societies where they belong, and the difference of values of those societies, the political and economical ambiance, and the customs prevailed. They mark the distinction between the Western and the Oriental, the Aryan and the Tribal, the Courtesan and the Folk. Today, in this 21^st century world – in this modern world of elegant dreams with a matte finish, and the clandestine shadows of nightmare hovering over them – when we encounter a piece of art of the present times, often we are confronted with voices from various dialects of arts unified in a harmonic cadence.

Going through a number of traditional forms and pattern, deciphering them to the extent so that a new language might be drawn out from the ancient dialects is a mastery achieved by K. G. Subramanian (born in 1924, Kerala) – blending the Western and the Indian, the folk and the classical to give birth to a concept, innovative and playful, mocking yet soothing is the watermark of his. A chequered life, a graph that goes up and down, covers more dimensions of life than the lineal. From the study in the Presidency College, Madras in Economics, to the imprisonment with a permanent banishment from all academic institution under the British Government, to the admission in Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati (1944 -1948) and the story to unhindered success from this point onwards – his joining as a lecturer in the M.S University, Baroda (1951), his first exhibition in Delhi (1955) organized by the Shilpi Chakra group, his brief study in the Slade School of Arts (1956), his visit to the New York (1966) and coming back to Kala Bhavana as a professor of painting (1980) –Subramanian’s life seems to be out of the children’s book of fairy tale.

It is, perhaps, the exposure Subramanian accumulated at different phases of his life, from various sources that influenced him in the development of a distinguished language of artistry. However, Shantiniketan, Kala Bhavana, was had always played the most important role in his vision, approach and treatment – the tutelage of Nandalal Bose and the fellowship Ramkinkar Baij, the famed trinity of Kala Bhavana – tradition, nature and freedom impressed him, and he found inspiration by learning various techniques from professional hereditary craftsmen.

As a creative mind, this Professor Emeritus of Visva Bharati, is most versatile. While as a theoretician, Subramanian has dealt with the re – contextualization of the Western theory of art in the Indian aspect addressing the division between craft and art in the Indian traditions, as an artist, he has ventured painting, murals, sculpturing, clay – modelling, toy – making, illustration and designing, as well as terracotta. In his works we encounter a world rich with tradition and the artist’s branching out of it, adding creative richness of the creation itself – the raw directness of Kalighat pots, the elegant courtly female figures, amusing and alluring, the slight hint of irony in its most temperate degree, all congregate to tell an epic wrought in walls, or a terracotta piece, or painted on paper.

edited by Arnab Mazumdar