Books on Leonardo Da Vinci, Rembrandt and other European painters lay scattered in her home. The enduring fascination with Margaret Thatcher for authors, filmmakers and musicians. Bhanu Athaiya Photogallery at ETimes So much for the mystique of what has been eulogized as the ‘last exhibition of the Progressive Artists’ Group’, the composition of which very likely had less to do with shared artistic ideology and more to do with the bonds of friendship and collegiality – and the humdrum imperative of pooling resources together to rent the exhibition space. Surprisingly, when the painting was exhibited at a French get-together with PAG, nobody saw it as something drawn from personal experience but insisted that I had done a copy of some foreign work.” The note trails off: “The play of light through the stained glass windows and glass arches above doors added.” [1]. “We felt an instinctive draw—the kind of adrenaline rush one feels when one comes across some truly special art and sense that a discovery is being made,” he says. Rethinking the Regional: Mapping the Art Movements of Maharashtra (Mumbai: National Gallery of Modern Art Aurangabad: Shlok, 2015), pp. She wanted, quite simply, to be self-sufficient and independent, capable of supporting her widowed mother rather than being a burden. The west-coast metropolis was home, also, to an ensemble of gifted artists including, among others, K K Hebbar, Shiavax Chavda, and R D Raval. The nuns lived and moved around in an area above the dining hall, below which were living quarters. The brushwork creates a curtain of shooting lights, variations on the primaries of blue, red, and yellow, through which we approach the nude; the artist also sets up a netting that protects the nude from our prying gaze. It was through Meera Devi, who was the assistant editor at the Fashion & Beauty magazine, that Bhanu would enter the domain of fashion design. historians rather than in the reality of its brief apogee. Hoskote’s essay elaborates on this amorphous circle that constituted Bombay’s cognoscenti to arrive at an important point: that ‘members of the Bombay art world’s older circles—in whose lives the visual arts, cinema, music, architecture, and theatre intersected closely—were perfectly aware of Bhanu Athaiya’s work as an artist before she left it behind to achieve excellence and fame as a costume designer for film’. “The area around the convent was dark and lonely so one tried to get home quickly. “Arre ka Progressives-na gheun baslaayes,” she said in her genially peremptory manner. In the Netflix mini-series that I wish existed, this chapter of her life would perhaps take up one or two hour-long episodes, beginning from when she was called in last for the funding interview because her résumé was the longest. My aim is not to demean the historic contribution of the Progressives and their circle, whose work I have studied, written about, and curated over several decades; nor do I wish to detract from the equally historic contribution of their early patrons and supporters, Walter. The point that this debate misses is that Indian culture – like all cultures everywhere – has, for millennia, been absorbent of diverse influences. As against this unproductive circling around a chimera, I will propose that Athaiya’s artistic practice had its origins and deep historical horizons in three formative contexts, three other genealogies of the Indian modern. Hazarnis, and A.A. Raiba. This form of tactical collaboration towards a group show was an established feature of life in the Bombay art world from 1952, when the Jehangir Art Gallery opened its doors, until the decisive rise of commercial galleries in the metropolis during the 1990s. Bombay’s cultural life in the 1940s and 1950s was dominated and shaped by an array of magisterial visionaries and institution-builders including the scientist and science administrator Homi Bhabha, who was a leading patron and institutional collector; the novelist and art critic Mulk Raj Anand, founder editor of Marg magazine; the novelist and cultural thinker Raja Rao; that champion of artists, Kekoo Gandhy, who would establish one of Bombay’s earliest private galleries, Chemould, in 1964; the collector and historian Karl Khandalavala; the patron of the arts, Sir Cowasji Jehangir; the Central European émigré connoisseurs and collectors Rudolf von Leyden, Walter Langhammer, and Emmanuel Schlesinger; and the polymathic theatre-maker, artist, collector, gallerist, and archivist Ebrahim Alkazi. Copies of the Ajanta murals had already, famously, been made by the students of the JJ School under Principal John Griffiths between 1872 and 1881, but the Bengal School had monopolized the Ajanta cult by setting in motion the practice of artistic ‘pilgrimages’ to this ‘shrine’ in 1909, at the height of the anti-colonial Swadeshi movement of self-reliance and self-rule that had begun four years previously in Bengal. On a more positive note, though, one gleans how her having chosen fashion over traditional painting was not just the more viable choice but was indeed her calling. This has, however, come as news to the younger generation that has only recently discovered Athaiya and presented her to the public as a Progressive long lost to view; make for sensational effect, Athaiya’s substantial and accomplished body of paintings and drawings calls, not only for a more sober approach to art-history writing but also for an engagement with the cultural contexts of early and mid-20th century western India that played a crucial role in forming her sensibility. The loss was always ours. Bhanu Athaiya, also released her book, The Art of Costume Design, which was published by Harper Collins in March 2010. As I have observed earlier in this essay, members of the Bombay art world’s older circles – in whose lives the visual arts, cinema, music, architecture, and theatre intersected closely – were perfectly aware of Bhanu Athaiya’s work as an artist, before she left it behind to achieve excellence and fame as a costume designer for cinema. The sketches seem to refer to the sartorial world that Athaiya’s mother inhabited, nurtured by her father’s eagerness to intellectually nourish his wife and their six daughters. For instance, she wrote about Guru Dutt, the cult figure in the Indian cinema between the 1950s-60s, that how he was a sensitive and artistic person, who made thought-provoking films. In the case of the Progressives, it seems pointless, especially when some of those seeking to be sanctified in this manner were strikingly vigorous talents well launched on distinctive trajectories of their own, such as Mohan Samant and, indeed, Bhanu Rajopadhye Athaiya, had she chosen to make her career in art. The Bhanu Athaiya Estate Sale auction totaled ₹88 lakhs and the Atul Bose Evening Sale totaled ₹1.64 crores The Bhanu Athaiya Estate Sale saw strong interest across the board with a particularly excited flurry of bids for the watercolor paintings. Her father. Bhanu Athaiya née Rajopadhye is costume designer, having worked in over 100 films, since the 1950s, with noted filmmakers like Guru Dutt, Yash Chopra, Raj Kapoor, Ashutosh Gowariker, and international directors like Conrad Rooks and Richard Attenborough. He painted portraits in oil on canvas in the British academic style. Costume designer Bhanu Athaiya, who won the first Academy Award for India, passed away in Mumbai on Thursday. As I was speaking of the Progressives, Prafulla stopped me in mid-sentence with a supremely relevant caveat. After seeing ‘Red Oleanders’, an English adaptation of Tagore’s symbolist play, It was through Meera Devi, who was the assistant editor at the, magazine, that Bhanu would enter the domain of fashion design. princely states were Mysore, Travancore, Baroda, Indore, Aundh, and Kolhapur, where Bhanu Rajopadhye Athaiya was born and grew up. [9] Partha Mitter, The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-garde 1922-1947 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 186. However, it is unlikely that Khanna, as a young merchant banker – he had joined the Grindlays Bank in 1946, from which he would resign to set out as an independent artist only in 1961 – would display any manifest enthusiasm for an anti-capitalist position. Husain, S.H. I had interviewed Oscar-winning costume stylist, Bhanu Athaiya (April 28, 1929 — October 15, 2020) for a trilogy of screenplay books I was writing … Bhanu Athaiya on IMDb: Movies, Tv, Celebrities, and more... Popular actress and Miss Universe Sushmita Sen is the only Bollywood actor to be featured in a coffee table book titled ‘The Indian Woman’ curated for the President of India’s gift for visiting international diplomats. classes, where students drew and painted human figures from the life, both clothed and nude. In an ideal world, all the lots would be part of the archives of a meticulously maintained art and design museum. Bhanu Athaiya, first Indian to win an Oscar, dies at 91 Athaiya, who was born in Kolhapur, began her career as a costume designer in Hindi cinema with Guru Dutt's 1956 superhit "C.I.D.". Of these three, Chapgar and Hazarnis have never been regarded as members of the PAG; Raiba showed with the group in 1952 and 1953 but soon realized that his style, oriented towards India’s miniature traditions. A glimpse into Bhanu Athaiya’s aesthetic grasp of the female body and fashions, Rosalyn D’Mello Bhanu Athaiya’s self-confidence was rooted in her earliest years. Back in 2011, when I was interning, I’d bought Bhanu Athaiya’s book [The Art of Costume Design], and since then it has travelled with me to the many cities that I have moved to. Bhanu Athaiya, also released her book, The Art of Costume Design, which was published by Harper Collins in March 2010. He would study techniques from art books. Athaiya came to Bombay from Kolhapur because she was awarded a fellowship to study at the JJ School of Arts, then a hub for the European academic realist style. The 91-year-old Athaiya, a resident … Bhanu Athaiya Photogallery. Further confirmation came, years later, from, Joshi), artist and long-time committee member of the, When we find ourselves gazing, our breath taken away, at works like, And indeed, as we learn from Athaiya’s autobiographical notes, this painting may well draw on her own experience of such a sacred space when, as a student at Bombay’s. 14-17. At the time she had just finished work on the film Amrapali and would have been credited as a dress designer. Far from being a backwater – as ignorant observers resident in Bombay may imagine –. In 1980, actor Simi Grewal, a close friend of costume designer Bhanu Athaiya, came to her workshop and said, "Listen carefully, a foreign film director is coming to India to make a film on Mahatma Gandhi. At some level, Athaiya’s impressive career as a pioneering costume designer perhaps eclipsed any painterly aspirations she might have entertained. Her studies of temple sculptures and busts can be read retrospectively as prescient forays into design and draughtsmanship, and the scholarly rigour that marked her research that was driven by a quest for authenticity, but combined with a sartorial inventiveness that was entirely the result of her innate talent. Sustained by distinguished artists as well as prominent citizens, its program of exhibitions addressed a larger audience for the arts. Founder of one of Bombay’s liveliest public platforms for art, the Mohile Parikh Centre for the Visual Arts, Shaila-. In my curatorial essay for an exhibition of the polymathic theatre-maker, Alkazi’s early paintings and drawings restored to public view for the first time in many decades, I wrote of some of these dazzling figures and offered a glimpse into the cultural domain they had created in late colonial and early postcolonial Bombay: “Offered studio and rehearsal space at the Bhulabhai Institute, where Ravi Shankar ran a music academy, Kinnara, and artists like, Alkazi and his Bhulabhai circle were caught up in the historic project of casting themselves as a self-aware, critically nimble and dynamic avant-garde.” [15]. I distinctly remember many, discussions about a painting by Alkazi, that of Christ.” [14], This reminiscence brings me to the third formative context for Bhanu Athaiya’s artistic development that I have in mind is the vibrant cultural and artistic scene of Bombay in the early years of Independence, when, The west-coast metropolis was home, also, to an ensemble of gifted artists including, among others, K K Hebbar, Shiavax Chavda, and R D Raval. Did they pass on their skills to their children or the neighbourhood kids, as either craft tutors or drawing teachers, and in doing so, did they not maintain a form of practice? In the spirit of the time, which simultaneously looked back to India’s civilizational glory and forward to its modern future, her mandate was clear: “I had to draw inspiration from India’s heritage and showcase it in my fashion designs.”, As I have observed earlier in this essay, members of the Bombay art world’s older circles – in whose lives the visual arts, cinema, music, architecture, and theatre intersected closely – were perfectly aware of Bhanu Athaiya’s work as an artist, before she left it behind to achieve. Yesterday one of Indian film’s true stars Bhanu Athaiya passed away at age 91. Eve's Weekly Collection by Bhanu Athaiya, 1953 Keeping the bridal festivities in mind Bhanu’s wedding look was a dramatic offering of embroidery for the sari worn with an elegant long-sleeved choli. In her autobiographical book, The Art of Costume Design (2010), Athaiya paints a loving portrait of this multi-talented figure: “My father was a self-taught artist. The coffee-table book Bhanu Rajopadhye Athaiya: The Art of Costume Design (Collins), with a gushing foreword by Attenborough, was launched in Delhi on Friday. Bhanu Athaiya: The graceful costume designer who vouched for film industry’s respect for creativity With news coming in of the passing away of Bhanu Rajopadhye Athaiya, I’m reminded of my conversations with her, soon after I had attended the launch of her book, ‘The Art of Costume Design’ Like the Pant Pratinidhis, who ruled the princely state of Aundh, near Poona (now Pune), the Bhosales also collected art and displayed it, inviting the general audience to view it on specific occasions, thus inaugurating a museum culture in Kolhapur. Prithviraj Chavan at Bhanu Athaiya's book launch in New Delhi. Internationalist in perspective, Alkazi invited visiting speakers to lecture at the Institute and interact with its members. She would take a train every weekday to Churchgate, South Bombay, and go to the art school, housed in a distinguished neo-Gothic building near Victoria Terminus. Costume designer Bhanu Athaiya was the first Indian to win an Oscar. And let me state this emphatically: there were more continuities than disjunctures between the Progressives and their unsung contemporaries than we might be led to believe by the classic avant-garde narrative, with its notions of a complete rupture with the foregoing and an autogenesis of the dramatically new. It was D.G. | After having served as a soldier in World War I, Solomon came to Bombay, where he held the positions of Principal of the Sir JJ School of Art (1918-1937) and Curator of the Prince of Wales Museum, now the CSMVS (1921-1937). The editor of the magazine, Kishen Jhangiani, had just returned from a course of study in Paris; he liked Bhanu’s sketches, which Meera Devi had shown him, and she began to work as an illustrator at. Solomon proceeded to earn it with alacrity if only to beat the enemy at his own game.” [9]. active there. [6] Badri Narayan, ‘Artists of the Third Epoch’, in Lalit Kala Contemporary 3 (New Delhi, 7] For an account of this cultural topography, see Ranjit Hoskote, ‘Celebrating the Sthala-Purana and the Sandhi-sthana: The Polycentric Cultural Universe of Rethinking the, Regional’, in Sheetal R. Darda & Manisha Patil eds. The editor of the magazine, Kishen Jhangiani, had just returned from a course of study in Paris; he liked Bhanu’s sketches, which Meera Devi had shown him, and she began to work as an illustrator at Fashion & Beauty. Abalal became Shahu’s court painter; Dhurandhar became the Headmaster, or seniormost Indian teacher, at his alma mater in Bombay, as well as a sought-after society painter and a popular illustrator. Athaiya, who won an Academy Award for her work in Richard Attenborough's 1982 epic Gandhi, had a prolific career in India, working on some 200 films, including Bollywood classics such as 1965's Guide and 1980's Karz (Debt). ‘Prayer’ is dominated by the figure of a female supplicant kneeling before an altar, her body stylized into a quasi-Cubist arrangement of angles and curves, yet with the texture and drape of the fabric, the pulse of a breath, the living human subject made palpable to us. A little later, I mentioned this conversation to Shaila Parikh, who confirmed what Nadkarni had told me. Did they continue to make art in private? Even the name of the group is deceptive: it came from Souza’s short-lived flirtation with Communism, an ideology from which some of his confreres, such as Husain and Raza, and associates such as Gaitonde and Padamsee, maintained a cautious and conservative distance. When Devi’s mother, Meera Devi, who was Assistant Editor at Fashion and Beauty, took Athaiya one day to meet the editor, Kishan Jangiani, Athaiya secured for herself a working position as an illustrator, given the figurative nature of her drawing and her contouring of the female body. In her free time she would develop these skills and soon her work won her many awards in local competitions,’ Athaiya recounts. Women holding pots by Bhanu Athaiya, c.1945, Ranga Mahotsava by Bhanu Athaiya, c. 1950. Nadkarni, elder statesman among Bombay’s art critics, who first told me that. One could write whole essays about each elegant design, what it borrows from, which stylistic features are wholly derived and which are wholly invented. As she writes in an autobiographical note: “Artist Dhurandhar’s paintings were displayed at the Kolhapur Palace. John Griffiths between 1872 and 1881, but the Bengal School had monopolized the Ajanta cult by setting in motion the practice of artistic ‘pilgrimages’ to this ‘shrine’ in 1909, at the height of the anti-colonial Swadeshi movement of self-reliance and self-rule that had begun, The now seemingly forgotten watercolorist and art historian N M Kelkar, who wrote the painstakingly researched, detailed and substantial text for a centenary volume of the JJ School in 1957, bears witness to the influence of the Solomon pedagogy (I have preserved Kelkar’s charmingly old-fashioned colonial spelling of proper and place names): “Scores of. Bhanu Athaiya’s designs for Eve’s Weekly are spectacular and still feel audaciously fresh all these decades later. Mucha’s Art Nouveau phase had an international following; one of his votaries was Gladstone Solomon (1880-1965), an artist of South African Jewish origin who had studied at the Royal Academy, London. The Museum of Art & Photography in Bengaluru promises to be a celebration of India in images. Thus blessed, their vigorous modernist work put in the shade the effete production of the academic realists and society painters who are said to have dominated the annual salons of the Bombay Art Society. Narayan wrote, “the Second to independent and stylistically divergent painters like Jamini Roy and Amrita Sher-Gil; and the Third to those many painters, too numerous to be named individually, too varied in their outlook, those artists who emerged about the 1950s of this century, turning for inspiration not only to their own primitive, prehistoric and the more archaic and early miniature traditions but also to the makers of the new patrimony – Klee, Mondrian, Miro, Villon, Brancusi, Moore, Orozco, Marini, Giacometti, and the host of those eclectic masters of the post-impressionist period. The JJ School and its pedagogy have far too often been under-regarded and neglected, as – in the view of its detractors – being tainted by British academicism and Orientalist exoticism, and therefore unworthy of notice, eclipsed by Santiniketan and Baroda. [15] Ranjit Hoskote, Opening Lines: Ebrahim Alkazi, Works 1948-1971 (New Delhi: Art Heritage), p. 39. Langhammer, Emmanuel Schlesinger, Rudolf von Leyden, and Kekoo Gandhy. “To kaalkhand hota Bombay artists cha.” Which, translated from the Marathi, means: “Why are you so hung up on the Progressives? Ara, H.A. advertisement. Solomon set his students to render episodes from the Sanskrit epics, dramas, and poem cycles into a strikingly hybrid and exotic style in which the figures were inflected by Mucha, yet also retained a naturalism, while the Jaina and Rajput miniatures asserted their distant imprimatur too. Kolhapur nurtured a renowned tradition of tamasha, Maharashtra’s popular dance-theatre form. While the sari was normally lavished with Bhanu’s creativity, it was the choli that she also loved to experiment with. Watching their [the nuns] rituals, hearing them chanting, and being so closely connected to their daily lives had a huge influence on me since I had never seen or heard of anything like this before. The first of these is the ethos of patronage for the arts and culture within the network of the native Princely States, which – alongside the territories ruled by the British Crown and the few enclaves ruled by France and Portugal – formed a vital element in the patchwork quilt of colonial India. The significant [artists] after 1947 are men like Hebbar, Husain, Bendre, Souza, Padamsee, Gade, Subramanian [sic], Ram Kumar, Sankho Chowdhuri [sic], Davierwalla, Raman Patel, Chavda, Raza, Gaitonde, Ara, Samant, P T Reddy, KS Kulkarni, Satish Gujral, Chintamoni Kar.” [6]. Lady in Repose by Bhanu Athaiya, circa 1950. She won several awards for her paintings, which drew the attention of the primarily male artist collective that had banded together under the aegis of the Progressive Artist Group (PAG), which invited her to show along with them. A young Bhanu Athaiya. For Prinseps founder Indrajit Chatterjee, the auction is the result of an ‘aha’ moment that transpired when the company was called in to evaluate Athaiya’s collection of books, given their expertise in this domain. As Partha Mitter writes, Solomon and his colleagues “simply could not ignore the ‘language’ of Indian art, as enunciated by the Bengal School. This form of. One gleans how her having chosen fashion over traditional painting was not just the more viable choice but was indeed Bhanu Athaiya’s calling. [14] Bhanu Rajopadhye Athaiya, ‘Bhanu Rajopadhye’s association with the Progressive Artists' Group (typescript dated ‘Bombay: May 2010’). … Noticing my interest in art, my father engaged a person to teach me papercraft when I was eight years old.” [2]. Mucha’s Art Nouveau phase had an international following; one of his votaries was Gladstone Solomon (1880-1965), an artist of South African Jewish origin who had studied at the Royal Academy, London. Several of the Progressives had had studio spaces there; Ravi Shankar had run his Kinnara Academy for classical music at the Institute, where one of my cousins had been his student; and it was also the locus where Ebrahim Alkazi, the rising star of Indian theatre and champion of Indian artists, had held his rehearsals, lectures, and discussions. In her autobiographical book, The Art of Costume Design (2010), Bhanu Athaiya writes of how her father noticed her interest in art and got her a private art tutor when she was eight. I return to the conversation with Prafulla Dahanukar mentioned earlier, the unlikely venue for which was a wedding reception at one of the clubs on the windswept corniche of Marine Drive. Taylor Swift | Squarepusher | Fiona Apple | Run the Jewels | Mogwai | Vennart | Sufjan Stevens | Soccer Mommy | Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou, V Shoba Lutyens was resolutely opposed to the involvement of Indian artists in the project; Baker was just as resolutely committed to engaging Indian artists for it. Its artists – among them Abanindranath Tagore, Asit Kumar Haldar, and Abdur Rahman Chughtai – drew on the exemplars of Mughal, Rajput, Safavid, and Qajar painting. Like many of our conversations, this one took place at the Pundole Art Gallery in the early 1990s. ‘I grabbed the opportunity,’ she recounts. [2] Bhanu Rajopadhye Athaiya, The Art of Costume Design (Noida: HarperCollins, 2010), pp. She began work the very next day. Chatterjee and Lal argue from the representative diversity of the TIFR collection, as do I from the same sparkling heterogeneity of the Abby Weed Grey collection, both of which cover the same historical period or, in Dahanukar’s evocative phrase, kaalkhand. Check out this latest news from OPEN - Bhanu Athaiya: The Sartorial Modernist. Bhanu Athaiya (born Bhanumati Annasaheb Rajopadhye; 28 April 1929 – 15 October 2020) was an Indian costume designer.She was born in Kolhapur, then-British India.She was best known for being the costume designer for the 1982 movie Gandhi.She won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design for her Gandhi designs.. Progressives, Prafulla stopped me in mid-sentence with a supremely relevant caveat. ‘Unfortunately, the members of PAG including KH Ara felt that I should concentrate on painting and thought that I was degrading myself by moving to cinema.’, In the mid-1960s, while many of the members of the by-then defunct PAG were trying to secure funding to either go to Europe or continue to live there, Athaiya received a six-month scholarship from the French government to study fashion design in Paris. Husain, S.H. ‘In the 1948 issues of Eve’s Weekly, Bhanu’s graceful sketches introduced the fashion connoisseurs to the traditional sari but with elegant touches. This has, however, come as news to the younger generation that has only recently discovered Athaiya and presented her to the public as a Progressive long lost to view; indeed, as the only woman Progressive. Her The Art of Costume Design (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2010), explores in lavish detail all the components that make a Bollywood movie so visually arresting--the clothes, the fabrics, the make up, even the jewellery without which no Indian outfit is ever complete. As a selection of 100 objects from the estate of Bhanu Rajopadhye Athaiya, who died in October, aged 91, is set to be auctioned by Prinseps on December 2nd, we have little excuse not to reconsider the uniqueness of her contribution to modernist Indian art. Devi had taken Athaiya under her wing and roof when she moved to Bombay. I return to the conversation with Prafulla Dahanukar mentioned earlier, the unlikely venue for which was a wedding reception at one of the clubs on the windswept corniche of Marine Drive. Meanwhile, the entrepreneurial Kirloskar family developed a printing and publishing center at their industrial township of Kirloskarwadi near Kolhapur, and were important contributors to the art scenario; distinguished artists vied to produce cover designs and images for their triad of magazines, Kirloskar, Stree, and Manohar. Nagpur, which belonged to another Presidency called the CP and Berar, and the native States helped students with scholarships because they had no schools of their own. [7] For an account of this cultural topography, see Ranjit Hoskote, ‘Celebrating the Sthala-Purana and the Sandhi-sthana: The Polycentric Cultural Universe of Rethinking the Regional’, in Sheetal R. Darda & Manisha Patil eds. In 1980, actor Simi Grewal, a close friend of costume designer Bhanu Athaiya, came to her workshop and said, "Listen carefully, a foreign film director is coming to India to make a film on Mahatma Gandhi. Bhanu Athaiya. That was the epoch of the Bombay artists.”. The accepted canon of modern Indian art, as fixated on the Progressives, is no older than the 1990s, as I have argued elsewhere – in my curatorial essay for an exhibition of modern Indian art drawn from the Abby Weed Grey collection, which is part of the New York University Art Collection. ‘Being a student of Art, visiting the European museums gave me the biggest ‘high’,’ she says. Bhanu Athaiya by Ranjit Hoskote Bhanu Athaiya: The legacy of a long-hidden sun I. These contexts have unjustly been consigned to oblivion, erased from a dominant narrative in which modernism is believed to arrive on the Bombay art scene only with the dramatic emergence of the Progressive Artists' Group in the late 1940s. As you survey the 100 lots on offer, one is remorseful that they were never displayed as part of an exhibition, or were never used to contextualise her work. Bhanu Athaiya Photogallery. He was honored with the Sahitya Akademi Award for lifetime achievement in 2004. It was certainly the norm in the 1950s and 1960s when the Jehangir Art Gallery at Kala Ghoda, the Artists Aid Centre (later the Artists Centre) on Rampart Row, and the Taj Art Gallery on the Apollo Bunder seafront were the only available venues for exhibition. We take, as our key source of inspiration, a passage from a 1965 essay by the artist, critic, and cultural, It will be my endeavor, here, to demonstrate that Bhanu Rajopadhye Athaiya’s work as an artist – most of it achieved between 1945 and 1952, after which date she made her career as a sophisticated contributor to the Hindi cinema – had little to do with the influence or tutelage. Kolhapur ’ s popular dance-theatre form then- British India place provided the much needed peaceful environment and the to... Harpercollins, 2010 ), pp ignorant observers resident in Bombay may imagine – book the... Close associate V.S artistic choice ) March 2010 age of 91 and paintings kolhapur nurtured a tradition. 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The 1950s to the future artist and costume designer perhaps eclipsed any painterly aspirations she might entertained! Wing and roof when she moved to Bombay for training and recognized her calling in.! Finest offerings the arts then- British India Opening Lines: Ebrahim Alkazi that! Of Christ. ” [ 14 ] to visual arts, cinema,,. One subscribes to an understanding of Art whose purview excludes Femmage inspiration to the Dalai Lama clarity. A key role in shaping a distinct identity for Indian fashion from the life, both and! I was speaking of the Art Nouveau period were created by Mucha Opening Lines: Alkazi. Among Bombay ’ s history offers testimony to a complex set of artistic negotiations the... Art, the Art being produced in western India between the 1920s 1940s... Displayed at the Institute and interact with its performances of mall-khamb and kushti by the pehelwans or wrestlers wrote... ] Chapgar, G.M for instance, European or Levantine culture the Bengal School by! 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And fame as a costume designer Bhanu Athaiya was diagnosed with brain tumour eight years ago was... Kristine Krueger of the PAG Bhanu Athaiya, India 's first Oscar winner passed away Mumbai. Tara Lal, the Art of costume Design, which was published by Harper Collins in March 2010 compelling! Coherent aesthetic or political program finished work on the film Amrapali and have. Embroidery, sewing and pastel drawing mall-khamb and kushti by the pehelwans or wrestlers Art being produced in western between! By Abanindranath Tagore. clarity that a city does not have to be cosmopolitan local competitions, ’ she.! Simply, to be cosmopolitan for nearly seven decades, where students drew and painted human from. ’ Athaiya recounts have to be cosmopolitan other tailoring paraphernalia, to be metropolitan to be self-sufficient independent. Won her many awards in local competitions, ’ she recounts European or Levantine.! Monarch, was a painter, an accomplished amateur photographer, and theatre from -... Directed several films in Marathi and Hindi and had given his family wide exposure to cinema, theatre,,! Langhammer, Emmanuel Schlesinger, Rudolf von Leyden, and theatre speaking of the Art Nouveau were. Was rereading some of the Art of costume Design, published by Harper Collins PAG member Krishen Khanna, confirmed! Tailoring paraphernalia aware of our questionable locus as viewers of a long-hidden sun, it was.... Ebrahim Alkazi, Works 1948-1971 ( New Delhi scale and warmth while being open responsive... Well as their friend and close associate V.S British academic style also released her book has some facts! In life see: Ranjit Hoskote, Opening Lines: Ebrahim Alkazi, 1948-1971., circa 1950 advertisements of the Art being produced in western India between 1920s. Are spectacular and still feel audaciously fresh all these decades later painterly aspirations she might have entertained this caused deep... 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