Every once in a while you dust the pages of history and rediscover a legend who was hidden in plain sight. Like artist Shanti Dave, India’s foremost calligraphic abstractionist whose star shone brightly in the 60s and 70s, only to inexplicably fade away. Until now. DAG has once again brought him back into the limelight with a Delhi show, Neither Earth, Nor Sky. It is the 92-year-old artist’s first-ever retrospective spanning a creative period from 1950 to 2014.
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As one enters the exhibition space, the first few canvases on display are from the 1960s—large works in muted earthy shades. Using the encaustic method—beeswax on canvas—the artist has layered one colour above another, till the picture resembles an archaeological site from a bird’s eye view. Two things from his past have contributed to this image. First, growing up in the tiny hamlet of Badpura in Gujarat, one of his earliest memories is of an excavation site near his village, which “spoke to him”. The second was when he entered an aircraft for the first time. The image captures a view of the world as seen from the window.
In 1962, India’s defeat by China affected Dave deeply; his compositions acquired sombre overtones. He painted a series of stark watercolours in various shades of grey—there are four such on display. They were also a marked departure from his previous abstract script work; this time complete words such as goli, hamla, hoshiyar, etc. can be seen inscribed in Devnagri script. For the fonts, he chose typefaces used in propaganda posters. From the 1980s onwards, brighter hues crept into his canvas. The works on the second floor of the gallery boast yellows and greens. While he still worked on larger canvases, his failing health prompted him to focus on small-format works. The gallery has one section devoted only to these. Smaller than A4-sized sheets, slightly larger than a postcard, these works are vibrant, as if he was keeping the advancing shadow of ill health at bay with incandescent shades of neon.
The now Delhi-based artist finally gave up painting in 2014, becoming a recluse. Senior VP of the gallery, Kishore Singh explains Dave’s absence, saying, “He did not enjoy the support of the English-language critics. For example, the fact that Richard Bartholomew wrote harshly about his work probably created bitterness in him. Dave also became more involved with Lalit Kala Akademi activities. With new galleries coming up in the 1990s pushing contemporary art, older artists got sidelined.” But in the period he practised, Dave used a variety of mediums, from oil to water, enamel, encaustic, adhesive, woodcut and even gravel.
A canvas on display shows one of his earliest works dating to the late 50s, wherein he makes his first use of calligraphic abstraction. The letters are wood cut and stand out of the canvas. Fresh out of art school—Dave had joined the first batch of the new Faculty of Fine Arts started by the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda headed by greats such as NS Bendre and KG Subramnyan in 1950—his career took off after he was commissioned to work on two murals for Parliament House in 1956. His prospects soared; Dave became the first artist to win the Lalit Kala Akademi national award thrice in a row, from 1956 to 58. Two of his earlier works made during his student years are also on view. These are largely figurative, influenced by his “emotional guru” Bendre.
Like many other famous Indian abstract artists such as KCS Paniker, SH Raza and VS Gaitonde, Dave too had incorporated the script into his work, but unlike them, he created his own unique version. “He tries to decode the script with his visual language by using a variety of colours, tonality and texture. He is never only painting, he is using different materials,” says curator Jesal Thacker, who believes Dave was inspired by sounds. “He loves the sound of chants. The atmospheric meaning or dhwani fascinates him. It creates a certain sound frequency, which he brings into his abstraction,” Thacker believes. The echoes of Dave’s memories and their significance continue to resonate through the hall of the greats.