Painter spurned money in his lifetime, now his paintings fetch crores of rupees

There was such  a fine ambience on the lawns of the CVSM museum, formerly Prince of Wales museum in Colaba last week for the release of a book on India’s foremost modern painter Vasudeo Gaitonde, a number of good speakers and a large gathering of art lovers.

The interesting part was that the painter whose work now commands crores of rupees in the international market lived the life of a recluse, cared little for money, seldom gave interviews. Even seniors in the art world of the present never got to meet him so the likes of M.F. Husain, Souza, Tybeb Mehta, Raza remain much more in the public eye in Mumbai.

Curiously, when Gaitonde died, art had not become a commodity as of now, so the media , also partly through ignorance, almost ignored his death. This angered Satish Naik who began seriously researching his life and came up with a biography whose English translation by veteran Shanta Gokhale, now reaches an international arena. Naik studied in J.J., is editor of the art magazine Chinha, a campaigner against corruption in art education.

In the book Nothing If Not Critical eminent critic Robert Hughes expressed his anger with the decline of modern art into a fame and money-obsessed marketplace in which the art world had become an extension of the stock exchange, dominated by collectors interested only in artworks as investment and by artists (he railed especially against Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst) who aren’t artists in the truest sense, but grotesque market manipulators (‘The new job of art is to sit on the wall and get more expensive’). Gaitonde would have appreciated that

One of the best speeches last evening came from Amol Palekar, actor, who is basically trained an artist, has held exhibitions, he personally knew Gaitonde who saw his works in the Taj Art gallery, Palekar was then intimidated, but Gaitonde had very comforting words about one painting. In the J.J. school itself Palekar had come to know leading artists like Hussain.

Gaitonde was essentially a non conformist, was into Zen Buddhism and was happy even when he got Rs 800 for a painting of his. Once he was seen carrying his works in a bundle and when someone asked, he said he was just going to throw them off.

Amol’s close involvement in the art and theatre movement makes him a very rare prominent film personality with such a background, very few had such a background, like Balraj Sahani, who was so well versed in literature and whom I first heard in a seminar in 1972 on 25 years of literature in the post independence movement.

Another speaker who had met Gaitonde quite a few times in Delhi was Prayag Shukla, prominent hindi writer, it was through painter Ram Kumar who had accommodated him for a few months in his studio.
Shukla even managed to interview Gaitonde, after the artist remained silent for ten minutes, then the topic of a film came up and Gaitonde opened up. Shukla wrote on him in Dinman the prestigious Hindi journal.

Presiding over the function was an unusual personality Nandkishore or Nandu Laad, prominent ortho surgeon, it was in this capacity that he came in touch with Gaitonde who had developed problems because of the strain of bending and painting. Gaitonde started painting again after a break of nine years.
Gaitonde started speaking with Laad in Konkani a fellow Saraswat but since he had been brought up in Indore he was not acquinted with it.

Pheroza Godrej said she had never met Gaitonde but often heard of him from Soli Batliwala, a prominent figure in the art world of Bhulabai Institute and Jehangir gallery who was called Soli Mama and who called Gaitonde as Gai.

Among other speakers were Kumar Ketkar, senior journalist, who had encouraged Naik to pursue work on Gaitonde, Sarayu Doshi, art history scholar, Shanta Gokhale, Ketan Karani, publisher, and Manjiri Thakur, associate editor of the book.

Sandhya Gokhale was a very competent host and anchor.She described the occasion as a cultural milestone.

Also felicitated were Vasudeo Kamat,artist, Achyut Palav, calligrapher, both recent Padma award winners, , Prabhakar Kolte , Sachidanand Dabholkar, Narendra Dengle, senior architect and author, Nitin Dadrawala, artist.

Mr Dengle has written a two volume history of architecture of Maharashtra for the state board for literature and culture.

Vidyadhar Date is a senior journalist, culture critic and author of a book on public transport