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Return of the veteran
RANA SIDDIQUI
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Suhas Roy is back to the Delhi art scene with a solo show after a long gap.
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Photo: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar
The genius Suhas Roy with one of his works displayed in New Delhi.
Suhas Roy remains as simple as a small-town Bengali ‘bhadralok’. Genial in nature, he doesn’t attend glamorous art parties and loves to joke about his age, appearance, height, and of course his first love, art. Now close to 80, the
famous painter, who calls himself, “Bengal’s son”, holding a glass of wine, is all set to talk about his solo show, “Drops of Silence”, mounted at New Delhi’s Dhoomimal Art Gallery to celebrate the gallery’s completion of 70 years this year.
Long journey
Roy exhibited his works in the city way back in 1986, when there were few takers for art. One such name was former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. She bought one of Roy’s painting for Rs.10000 then. Recalls Roy, “I couldn’t believe my luck. I got to know that she had been collecting my art. Only a month after she bought my painting (a landscape), she was assassinated. I was hurt. Not because I could have sold more works to her but because among very few art lovers, one was no more.” Gandhi, he assumes, “found a link” in his works because she was a product of Santiniketan where Roy taught for a long time.
Roy says he made his weakness for art very clear early in life to his parents. “They wanted me to take up science or commerce. But I ignored them. I used to draw madly – over walls, waste sheets, table corners, my text copies. I would often tell them humbly, ‘I can’t concentrate on other subjects. The only subject I can relate to is art’.
Despite their pressure, I enrolled myself in Indian College of Art and Draftsmanship in Kolkata in 1953. As I was close to finishing the course, I won a scholarship to go to Paris to study graphic art at L’Ecole Nationale Superior des Beaux Arts. Because I was going ‘phoren’ my folks came around,” laughs Roy.
Return of the native
Roy couldn’t live in Paris for long. “My country was calling me. I wasn’t a rich man when I came back. But when I got the job of an art teacher in the same college in which I studied, my financial condition became steady. My monthly salary was Rs.110. During my tenure as a teacher, National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi bought one of my paintings for Rs.60. It was thrilling,” reminisces the veteran.
Roy has always been able to create some mystery through his oft-repeated figure of Radha – his nayika on the canvas. His Radha is not stunningly beautiful, but is an epitome of serenity.
She is coy and barely looks into the viewers’ eyes. She always seems to be in a trance and feels protected amid blooms and greens. “My Radha is an ideal woman. She has beauty and strength. At times she is the epitome of love for Krishna and at times, she is Durga. She is a mother, daughter, sister, wife and the beloved.”
But this time, Roy has also spared his brush for the Buddha and the Christ in this show which is on view till January 20.
Having lived the life of an artist for decades, he is not all that happy with the present-day art scene.
“Every day, ‘they’ come to me and say that they want my painting for this or that charity. I have given many. Now, I am fed up. I don’t know what they do with my painting. Many art buyers either delay payment or don’t turn up at all. They quote my works too high. I don’t understand it. Now I am collecting all my money to institute an award for young and talented artists.
It would be called ‘Suhas Samman’. I tell my children, ‘You have a lot of money, cars and houses. Now let the others have it.”
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Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
|
