Songs of Reclamation: The Art of A. Ramachandran

What makes the latest exhibition of Ramachandran, opened at Emami Art Gallery in Kolkata, interesting for students is that his original children’s book illustrations are also on display in this show. Five children’s books written by him were also released at the opening of the show.

The season of art exhibitions has just begun and this year Kolkata is celebrating it with a major exhibition, ‘Songs of Reclamation: The Art of A. Ramachandran’, curated by R Siva Kumar. The show, organised by Emami Art, a prominent art gallery in Kolkata, in collaboration with Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, is a retrospective-scale solo that brings together a remarkable body of works by Ramachandran that includes paintings, sculptures, drawings and sketches. What is more interesting is that his original children’s book illustrations are also on display in this show.

Ramachandran belongs to the generation of Indian artists who began their careers in the 1960s and whose art was shaped by India’s post-independence experience, according to Siva Kumar. Ramachandran’s early work focused on the predicament of peripheral men trapped in a life of un-freedom, irrationality and suffering in a world that swore by freedom, rationality and progress. The idea of committed art and the modern world as a place of absurd cruelty and suffering shaped his art from the 1960s to the early 1980s. That made his art an act of emphatic protest articulated on a grand scale, akin to murals, said the curator.

“In the mid-1980s, disenchanted with his endeavour to change hearts through art, Ramachandran decided to begin anew after an encounter with the landscape and life of rural communities around Udaipur. In the marginalized Bhils, who lived a communitarian life in harmony with nature, he saw more freedom and awareness of social ecology. In his recent art, he might appear to be turning away from modernism and making a romantic escape into the pre-modern past. But on closer look, it is not difficult to see that he is reminding us of nature and everything else that made life beautiful and meaningful before we instrumentalized nature and man,” he adds in the curatorial note.

As part of the show, five children’s book written by Ramachandran along with his artist wife Chameli – The Golden City, The Bad King Who Became A Good King, Jivya and The Tiger God, Dakiya The Mailman, and Bhima and the Fragrant Flower – were also released, apart from the exhibition catalogue ‘Songs of Reclamation: The Art of A. Ramachandran’.

Although he is primarily a painter, Ramachandran is also interested in expressing his vision in as many mediums and ways as possible. It has made him a sculptor, a tireless and brilliant draftsman, and an enthusiastic designer, especially of books for children. This exhibition offers a glimpse into all that. He has written and co-written around fifty picture books for children between 1961-92, that were published in India and abroad, including Japan, where his children’s books are very famous. Also he has conducted workshops on children’s book illustrations in many countries for UNESCO. As an artist, he has also designed stamps for India Posts. 

Born at Attingal, in Kerala, in 1935, Ramachandran developed an interest in arts, including painting, music and literature at a very early age. Ramachandran established himself as a professional singer before he turned to painting. In 1957, after completing MA in Malayalam Literature, he went to Santiniketan to study art under Ramkinkar Baij and came into close contact with legends such as Benodebehari Mukherjee and Nandalal Bose, and his interactions with these teachers left a lasting impression on his artistic career. A chance encounter with Ramkinkar’s sculpture the ‘Santal Family’ in reproduction led him to Santiniketan in 1957, remembers Ramachandran.

Although born in Kerala and settled in Delhi, Ramachandran has had a long and enduring relationship with Kolkata, says Siva Kumar, who adds: “His artistic sensibility and vision were first formed by the post-partition suffering he encountered on the streets of Kolkata. The city then appeared to him as crumpling and dying like ‘an old colonial photograph’, but behind the decay and suffering he also experienced much human empathy and intellectual vitality. This led him to love Kolkata and even write that ‘I prefer my skeleton to be found in the ruins of Calcutta than in any other magnificent city of the world’.” 

In 1964, he moved to Delhi and in the following year, he joined Jamia Millia Islamia University as a lecturer in Art Education, which he and his colleagues developed into a full-fledged faculty of art. During the seventies, Ramachandran developed into a versatile artist, doing sculpture, prints, writing and books for children, and even designing stamps besides painting tirelessly in the scale of both murals and miniatures. 

According to Richa Agarwal, chief executive officer, Emami Art, this exhibition is the largest recent show of the artist in Kolkata, the city with which he has a special connection. “It displays myriad works from his large-scale paintings of lotus pond to the original children book illustrations for which he is widely known, revealing different aspects of A. Ramachandran’s creative genius. I sincerely hope that this exhibition will give all art lovers an exciting experience,” she said.

A much-honoured artist, he received the National Award in 1969 and 1972, the Noma Concours for Picture Book Illustrations in 1978 and 1980, the Parishad Samman from the Sahitya Kala Parshad in 1991, the Gagan-Abani Puraskar from Visva-Bharati in 2000, the Manaviyam Award in 2001 and the Raja Ravi Varma Award in 2003 from the Government of Kerala. In 2018, the Madhya Pradesh Government awarded him with The Kalidas Samman. He was conferred with Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 2005, and a Hon. D. Litt. degree from the Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala, in 2013.  

The curator of this exhibition, Siva Kumar is an eminent art historian, curator and author of over eighteen books. He has curated four major exhibitions of A. Ramachandran, including two retrospectives.