DIGITAL COPY ON MAGZTERremembers joining the Department of Fine
Arts in what was then called the Delhi
Polytechnic in 1953, which he remembers
as a buzzing, if yet nascent, art hub. ‘We
had Sailoz Mukherjee, Biren De, Jaya
Appasamy on the faculty.’ Painter Amitava
Das, a very young art buff then, recalls
the very proactive painter B C Sanyal
who founded the very influential Shilpi
Chakra group that had among its members
Kanwal Krishna, the newly returned
from Mexico Satish Gujral (who’d trained
as painter/muralist with the legendary
Siqueiros), painter Ram Kumar who’d just
returned from his Paris sojourn and the art
scholar/critic, Jaya Appasamy. Both Das
and Paramjit remember Ramkinkar Baij
chiselling, hammering away at the giant
twin Yaksha/Yakshi figures in the backyard
of the RBI building. Das recalls how Baij's
concept required giant monolithic stone
blocks which were simply not available in
those sizes. Thus he carved the statues in
sections as the stone blocks arrived, fusing
them to create his seemingly seamless
sculptures: an engineering and artistic
coup! Baij’s infectious sense of fun, his
essential humanity is fondly recalled.
‘Evenings he'd often come to the Coffee
House,’ twinkles famed painter Arpita
Singh, Paramjit’s better half, ‘that’s when
he’d be tippling, often singing songs for
all of us.’ Paramjit recalls the talented
nucleus of ceramic artists led by Sardar
Gurcharan Singh who formed the Delhi
Blue Pottery Trust. ‘Delhi was a place that
offered us artists professional opportunity,’
recalls Paramjit, ‘there were teaching jobsat newly founded institutes like Jamia,
scholarships like Fulbright to the United
States apart from the slew of grants/
scholarships available from Europe as also
the Eastern European ‘Communist’ bloc.
Not to mention innumerable government
commissions.’
While the Progressives fiercely debated
what constituted art or ‘Indian’ art in
Bombay and critiqued ceaselessly, the
Delhi art scene was no less pulsating
and alive. ‘The Silpi Chakra, an artist
collective, was really founded as a vital
artist led counterpoint to the very
Soviet, bureaucratic Fine Arts Society
and organised some memorable shows
that represented diverse artistic creeds,’
recalls Paramjit. Critics like Charles Fabri,
Santo Dutta, Keshav Malik and RichardWall Mural at the Delhi High
Court, Satish GujralIAF - Delhi Connecting Art/ FEB 2016 - MAR 2016 / ARTS ILLUSTRATED /^41