BORN IN PUNE (Maharashtra, India) in 1949, Sudhir Patwardhan qualified as a medical doctor in 1972. He worked as a radiologist in Thane (Bombay) between 1975 and 2005. Then, he moved from medicine to become a full-time artist. Until the 19th of October 2024, there is an exhibition of his paintings at number 3 Cork Street in London’s Mayfair.
The exhibition is called “Cities: built, broken”. As its name suggests, the show is filled with Patwardhan’s paintings, each of which depicts scenes of urban life. His beautifully executed, colourful paintings evoke daily life in Thane and Bombay (Mumbai). As the gallery’s website (www.frieze.com/no9-cork-street/vahdera-art-gallery-sudhir-patwardhan) explained:
“As a man of medicine, Patwardhan displays a profound understanding of the human figure, including its mental distortions and physical vagaries, with early inspiration from Cézanne and Picasso refining his intent. In this recent body of work, Patwardhan’s well-regarded visceral realism explores various dialectics and asymmetries, including class struggles, tensions between the material and spiritual and the emotional theatre of community. The shifting deportment of his figures across a series of charged slice-of-life scenes offers a moving portrait of the bustling annals of cities, where capitalist consumption, gentrification and the erosion of natural spaces are but few of the contested arguments about what constitutes as urban progress. He brings us a visual meditation on the geometric correspondences between various kinds of structures growing out of anarchic infrastructural development – often referred to colloquially in India as jugaad, or a kind of organized chaos.”
I could not have put this better. It describes the subject matter of the paintings beautifully. However, rather than just reading about it, I suggest that you see these wonderful paintings before the exhibition ends.
THE BEN URI gallery in was established in 1915 in London’s East End. Named in honour of Bezalel Ben Uri, the craftsman who designed and built the Ark of the Covenant, it moved to Boundary Road in St Johns Wood in 2002. Originally, it was a place where Jewish immigrant artists and craftsmen could display their work. More recently, it has widened its remit to feature artists of all religions, who have migrated to Britain from other countries.
Until the 29th of November 2024, the gallery is holding an exhibition of works by an artist born in Goa (part of India since 1961): Lancelot Ribeiro (1933-2010). He came to England to study accountancy in 1950. He disliked the subject. At first, he lived with his half-brother, the artist FN Souza. Later, he resided in Hampstead. In 1951, he began studying art at St Martins School of Art, where my mother created sculpture between 1950 and the mid-1960s. The exhibition at the Ben Uri focusses on Ribeiro’s work in the field of portraiture, and displays his innovative and imaginative approach to this form of art. The exhibition is small but well displayed. I felt it was a more satisfactory showing of Ribeiro’s art than the exhibition that was held recently at Hampstead’s Burgh House.
UNTIL THE 22nd OF SEPTEMBER 2024, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London’s South Kensington is hosting an exhibition called “Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence”. It focuses on two countries: Ghana and India. It was the exhibits relating to India that interested me most, although those connected with Ghana were also intriguing.
The Royal Institute of British Architects describes Modernism as follows:
“Rejecting ornament and embracing minimalism, Modernism became the single most important new style or philosophy of architecture and design of the 20th century. It was associated with an analytical approach to the function of buildings, a strictly rational use of (often new) materials, structural innovation and the elimination of ornament.” (www.architecture.com/explore-architecture/modernism).
Modernism began both in the USA and Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Its better-known pioneering exponents include Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Maxwell Fry, Louis Kahn, and Eero Saarinen. The Modernist architects, like the abstract painters of the early 20th century, broke with traditional approaches to form and style.
On the 15th of August 1947, India became independent. The country was no longer ruled by foreigners. Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) became India’s first Prime Minister, a position he retained until his death. His vision for India was for it to shake off the shackles of the past (both colonial and traditional) to become a modern state. This extended to architecture in his new India. He invited Modernist architects including Le Corbusier and his cousin Perre Jeanneret to design a new city in the Punjab (following the loss of Lahore to Pakistan): Chandigarh. This is illustrated well in the V&A exhibition. Le Corbusier wanted to create his ideal of a city, which included forbidding street markets and cows to wandering in its streets. His pupil and collaborator, Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi, who died in 2023, had a more human approach to architecture. Having seen some of his buildings, notably in Ahmedabad and Bangalore, I would say that Doshi developed an architectural opus, which might be loosely described as ‘user-friendly Corbusier’. Incidentally, Doshi was also taught by Louis Kahn, who worked in India, notably in Ahmedabad.
A label in the exhibition noted that in 1959, at a conference about national identity in Indian architecture, Nehru urged Indian architects not to be “imprisoned by tradition”, but to experiment as had been done at Chandigarh (built between 1951 and 1956). Examples of this experimentation can be seen in the exhibition.
Naturally, since Nehru’s death, there have been many changes in India. I notice new changes every time we make our annual trips to the country. Nehru’s vision of a secular India has been replaced by a different vision in the minds of the leaders of the present Indian Government. Modernism’s internationalist aspects, which attracted Nehru and some of his successors, appear to have lost their appeal currently in India.
Immediately after gaining independence, both Ghana and India favoured Modernism in architecture. The exhibition at the V&A shows that even before independence, architects (almost all European) in Ghana had been building in the Modernist style, but specially adapted to cope with intense heat and high humidity. Ghana’s first leader, Kwame Nkrumah, encouraged the continuation of this architectural style. The exhibition includes a fascinating video about this. In India, Modernism seems to have been introduced post-independence. Both leaders wanted to project visions of a emerging modern countries, freed from the constraints of colonialism. Yet both promoted an architectural style developed largely by architects who came from countries that had had colonies in Asia and Africa.
Before ending this piece, I must not forget to mention two exhibits, which caricatured the great British colonial architect, Edwin Lutyens, who was certainly not a Modernist. One of them is a model of Lutyens’s head which has been combined with a model of one of his imperial buildings in New Delhi. The other, which is painted in the style of a Mughal miniature, shows Lutyens offering a model of the (British) Viceroy’s House (in New Delhi) to the Viceroy.
The exhibition was fascinating. Despite its rather obscure title, a good number of viewers were there during the Monday mid-afternoon when we visited it.
JUST OVER SEVEN years ago, I bought a book, which I put on a bookshelf without reading it, and then forgot about it. This September (2024) I found it whilst sorting through our book collection. It is a biography of the British politician Stafford Cripps (1889-1952), who visited India in March 1942. Winston Churchill had sent him there to negotiate with leading Indian Nationalists (including Gandhi, Jinnah, and Nehru) to keep them loyal to the British war effort in exchange for self-government when WW2 was over. It was up to Cripps, then a Labour politician, to formulate the proposed deal. The mission was not a success because Churchill thought that Cripps had offered the Indians too much, and the Indians thought his offer was not enough: they wanted independence immediately.
There have been many books written about Stafford Cripps. The one I found in my collection, “Stafford Cripps. A biography”, was published in 1949, when Cripps was still alive. When I looked at the book after ‘discovering’ it, what surprised me was the name of its author: Eric Estorick.
Until I looked at the book today (3rd of September 2024), I had only associated the name Estorick with a fine museum of 20th century Italian art – The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art. This is housed within Northampton Lodge, a Georgian building which was once the home and offices of the architect Sir Basil Spence (1907-1976), who was born in Bombay. This is in Canonbury, which is just north of Islington. The collection was established by the American Eric Estorick (1913-1993) and his German-born English wife Salome (1920–1989) after WW2.
Eric Estorick was none other than the author of the biography of Cripps, which I ‘unearthed’ today. Born in Brooklyn (NY), son of Jewish emigrés from the Russian Empire, he was awarded a PhD in sociology at New York University. In 1947, he married Salome (née Dessau), who was an artist. Eric’s interest in art began before that when he met the American photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946). The Estoricks began collecting art soon after the end of WW2. During their honeymoon, the Estoricks were introduced to the works of the Italian Futurists. The Collection contains several good examples of their works. In 1960, Eric opened the Grosvenor Gallery in London’s Davies Street. His first exhibition was a display of modern sculpture. It was in his gallery that my mother exhibited some of her sculptures in 1965, in an exhibition called “Fifty Years of Sculpture. Some aspects 1914-1964”. She must have been introduced to Eric at the time.
Apart from his interests in art, Eric Estorick was a prolific author. In addition to writing three books about Stafford Cripps, he wrote others about politics as well as art. One of his books, which was published privately, was a history of the Marks and Spencer firm, in which he worked for some time. It was in that company that Salome Estorick had worked. Marks and Spencer had been a customer of her father’s textile manufacturing firm.
Having found my copy of Estorick’s book and skimmed its contents, I will not be putting it into our storage unit as I had originally intended, but will begin reading it soon.
I ALWAYS ENJOY looking through the books on sale in charity shops (thrift shops). First of all, one often sees books that are either out of print or that you did not know existed. Secondly, occasionally, one finds real treasures.
Today, I was in an Oxfam shop near Covent Garden when I found a book called “Muslims in India.” Edited by Ratna Sahai, it was published in the mid to late 1990s. What made it interesting is that this illustrated and quite learned book was produced for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. In other words, it was commissioned by the Government of India. I wonder whether the present Indian Government will produce a new version of this volume.
I paid very little for the book – about 10% of what booksellers on the Internet are charging.
JUST AS THE ALBANIAN Skanderbeg (Gjergj Kastrioti: c1405-1468) heroically resisted the invasion of his country by the Ottomans in the 15th century, Khwaja Safar, also an Albanian, bravely led forces opposed to the Portuguese, who were attacking his adopted country India during the 16th century. Both were forcibly converted to Islam. One remained a Muslim, and the other returned to Christianity.
Khwaja Safar was a soldier; a merchant; the treasurer of Cairo; advisor to the Sultans of Egypt and Gujarat; and the Governor of the city of Surat. His parents were Albanian, yet he is remembered by a name which is not Albanian. You can discover why this is when reading my book about his extraordinarily fascinating life. “An Albanian in India” is available both as a paperback and a Kindle (eBook) from Amazon:
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The Albanian, known as ‘Khwaja Safar’, was born in southern Italy. Just as the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg fought the invaders of Albania, Khwaja Safar valiantly opposed the invaders of his adopted country – Gujarat.
After serving as a soldier in Italy, he went to sea as a trader, and was successful. While sailing in the Red Sea, he was captured by an Egyptian admiral, and taken to Cairo. He was presented to the Sultan. Khwaja rose rapidly to become the treasurer and trusted advisor ruler of Egypt’s ruler. From Egypt, he travelled to Yemen, and then to Gujarat in western India, where he became a formidable opponent of the Portuguese, who were aggressively attempting to monopolise trade in the Indian Ocean. With his knowledge and experience of the tactics of European armies, he became Portugal’s most formidable opponent in 16th century western India.
My book (also available as a Kindle eBook), “AN ALBANIAN IN INDIA”, is illustrated with pictures and maps. It describes Khwaja Safar’s extraordinarily exciting life and my visits to places where he made his mark in India.
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TWO HALF-BROTHERS from India were both artists, and spent time creating artworks in and around Hampstead. Lancelot Ribeiro (1933 – 2010) was one of them, and the other was his older and more famous brother Francis Newton Souza (1924-2002). Today (23rd of June 2024), we dashed up to Hampstead’s Burgh House to see an exhibition of works by Souza created when he lived in Hampstead and Belsize Park. This small, but superb exhibition closes today.
Born in Portuguese Goa, Souza studied art at the prestigious JJ School of Art in Bombay. A participant in the Quit India Movement, he was expelled from that school in 1945 when he pulled down a Union Jack flag at a school celebration. Souza migrated to the UK in 1949. By 1955, he was already making a success in London’s contemporary art world.
In London, Souza first lived in Paddington, then North Kensington, and by the mid-1950s, he had moved to Hampstead. By 1961, he had made enough money to buy a large house – number 9 Belsize Park. He remained there until he moved to the USA in 1968.
The exhibition handout (produced by London’s Grosvenor Gallery) described Souza as an Expressionist artist who:
“… conveyed the fear and anguish of the generation.”
One of the great fears was that of nuclear weapons. Souza became an anti-nuclear activist, taking part, for example, in the Aldermaston Marches. Three of the paintings at the exhibition, “The Mad Prophet of New York”, “The Apocalypse”, and “Oedipus Rex”, reflected Souza’s reaction to nuclear weaponry, and were painted during his time in the Hampstead area.
At least two of the paintings we viewed reflected Souza’s life in northwest London. One of them depicts a church in Chalk Farm (near Belsize Park), and the other, a parody of Picasso’s 1907 “Demoiselles d’Avignon”, has the title “Young Ladies of Belsize Park”.
The paintings were hung in the well-lit Peggy Jay Gallery in Burgh House, and were accompanied by informative panels. It is a shame that this excellent exhibition was only open for a few days (19th to 23rd of June 2024). I am glad that we made the effort to see it.
MATTHEW KRISHANU WAS born in Bradford (UK) in 1980. His parents were Christian missionaries. His father was British, and his mother Indian. Their work took them to Bangladesh, where Matthew and his brother spent some of their childhood years. Matthew’s formal education in art took place at Exeter University, and then at London’s Central St Martin. Today, the 1st of June 2024, we viewed a superb exhibition of his paintings at the Camden Art Centre in Hampstead’s Arkwright Road. The exhibition continues until the 23rd of June 2024.
Many of the paintings on display include depictions of two young boys – the artist and his brother – often in a tropical setting that brings to mind places on the Indian Subcontinent. The paintings vary in size, but all of them are both pleasing to the eye and full of interest. His paintings of trees and other plants are impressionistic. Like many of the other pictures, they were inspired by the artist’s childhood in Bangladesh and later visits to India.
One room with several paintings contains works that must have been inspired by the artist’s memories of being brought up in a missionary family. The paintings in this gallery are depictions of the colonial legacy of Christianity in the Indian Subcontinent. Another indication of the artist’s upbringing in a Christian religious family setting is the appearance of small images of the Last Supper in several of the paintings, including those which are not specifically portrayals of religious environments.
Although, there is no doubt much that can be read into his paintings, Krishanu’s works are both approachable and engaging. I liked them immediately – as soon as I saw them. It is worth a visit to Arkwright Road to see this well laid-out exhibition.
LANCASHIRE USED TO be the centre of the cotton processing industry in the UK. Cotton grown in the southern USA and in India’s Gujarat was shipped to Lancashire, where the cotton mills used it to manufacture textiles.
In the heart of the city of Manchester, we were surprised to find a huge bronze statue of the former President of the USA, Abraham Lincoln (in office from 1861 to 1865). Lincoln played a significant role in the abolition of slavery in his country. Many of the slaves worked to grow and harvest cotton, much of which was sent to Lancashire. The processing of the cotton grown by the slaves provided employment for the workers of Lancashire. The statue was created by the American artist George Grey Barnard (1863-1938) in 1919, and is one of three castings – the others being in Louisville, Kentucky and in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Beneath the statue in Manchester and carved in the plinth, there is the wording of a letter sent by Lincoln to the working people of Manchester. Written on the 19th of January 1863, Lincoln thanked the workers of Manchester, who were supporting the abolition of slavery and at the same time suffering because of the blockade that prevented cotton reaching Lancashire from the southern states of the USA. According to one website (https://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/statues/lincoln.html), Lincoln’s blockade of the cotton exporting ports was not universally welcomed:
“To what degree the people of Lancashire gave this support willingly is questionable. Lincoln’s Union Army blockaded the southern ports preventing the Confederate supporters from trading their cotton and causing what was known as the Cotton Famine in the UK. By November 1862, three fifths of the labour force, 331,000 men and women, were idle. The British Government was encouraged to take action to overturn the blockade and riots broke out because of the hardship suffered by the workers. The Confederate Flag flew on some Lancashire mills.”
The American Civil War was not the only time that the Lancashire cotton workers had to suffer because of a freedom struggle taking place many thousands of miles away. In addition to the USA, British India was a supplier of cotton to the mills of Lancashire. Indian cotton was sent to Lancashire, and processed to make textiles that were then sold in India. Because of this, a vast number of weavers in India, who could have made the textiles, were made unemployed and impoverished.
As part of Mahatma Gandhi’s attempt to free India from British rule, he initiated a boycott of cloth and clothing made with textiles manufactured in England. This was sufficiently successful to render a great number of Lancashire textile workers unemployed – at a time when the Great Depression was hitting the country. On the 25th of September 1931, Gandhi travelled from London to Darwen, a small town (with textile factories) north of Manchester. He spent the following days speaking to people of all walks of life, explaining the purpose of his Khadi movement – the boycotting of imported textiles and the encouraging of homespun Indian textile production. Both of my wife’s grandmothers chose to wear only khadi cloth because they supportrd the freedom struggle. James Hunt described Gandhi’s visit to Lancashire in his book “Gandhi in London”, and noted that:
“Everywhere Gandhi explained that whatever the effect of his khaddar movement and boycott might have on Lancashire’s unemployment was a result of his prior concern with the greater sufferings in India. While Britain had 3,000,000 unemployed. India had 300,000.000 villagers idle every year. The average Indian income was a tenth of what the British unemployed worker received from the dole …”
Overall, despite the effects that his boycott was having, the workers of Lancashire welcomed him warmly and supported his cause.
Until we visited the Manchester Museum, which is about 1.3 miles south of Lincoln’s statue, I was unaware of Gandhi’s visit to Lancashire. The museum has a gallery dedicated to the South Asian diaspora, despite being called “the South Asia Gallery”. One of its showcases concentrates on the Mahatma’s brief visit to Darwen.
We visited Manchester in May 2024 to see an art installation curated by our daughter. We also wandered around the city, sightseeing. Little did we expect to discover connections between this vibrant city and both Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi.
yamey 