K S Kulkarni: A Separate Reality

In 1953, I came across the studio of K.S. Kulkarni while looking for an artist to write captions on a photograph.

Meeting Kulkarni turned out to be a fateful event for me. He was the first modern artist I met. He saw, a new world of art— where open minded creative people sacrificed commercial interest to express their vision and ideas breaking away from traditional India. I learnt, however, that most of these artists, whose art was their passion and life, were facing hardship due to the lack of patronage of art in India. Where in the West private art galleries provided regular support and contracts to artists, there was not a single such gallery in India at the time. Public institutions were not geared for providing the needed support either.

Having learnt of these dire times for the artists, and myself appreciating the value of the art, I decided to enter this adventurous field despite the financial commitment. In October 1955, I established Kumar Gallery, with the sole purpose of projecting the work of contemporary artists. The Gallery offered, irrespective of sale, monthly remuneration to several artists, artists who are recognized as the leading artists of the country today. Kulkarni was among the first of the artists to have his solo shoes with the Gallery. This show was in subsequent years followed by several shows and retrospectives of his art. His largest retrospective was held in 1969 at the Gallery.

Too many to count are the memorable moments I have spent with Kulkarni, witnessing his work first hand. He is well known for his contribution to the cause of artists, art education, art institutions, and art galleries. I am grateful to this day for the insightful dialogues we had over the years on such issues.

In an attempt to show how great a man he truly was, I have chosen to include an article by Baldeo Sahai. For reflection on his art I found it most appropriate to include articles by the eminent art historians and critics — A.S. Raman, Keshav Malik, Santo Datta and J. Swaminathan (an eminent artist himself). Presented also are some of the important works of Kulkarni in various mediums. From what I have witnessed of Indian contemporary art in the past five decades, I can say that Kulkarni's approach is quite a separate reality and unique in itself.

- Virendra Kumar Jain (Nov. 01 2006)

Kulkarni — A Sage Artist

More widely travelled than most Indian artists, Kulkarni's spiritual tranquility has not been disturbed by the challenges of the spectacular West. Nor has he had to .don the robes of his forbears to establish an identiry. Coming from sturdy Maharashtrian peasant stock, Krishna KuIkarni has walked through life — and expressed himself in art —with an equanimity born out of centuries of harmonious living with nature.

What is it that distinguishes the Hindu attitude to life from that of the Western? It is perhaps the sense of identity, the feeling of belonging, which transcends the tensions born out of the struggle of man with his immediate environment and leads him to clothe nature in his own image without dehumanising himself. The world of Kulkarni is essentially the world of the Indian peasant, a world still throbbing to the drum-beats of the folk-dancers, swaying with rapture to the hypnotic melody of the shepherd's flute, jogging along in the ancient bullock-cart. It is also a world which reveals the tensions and travails of the peasant, caught in the vortex of this fast-changing world yet stolidly withstanding its blows and buffets. In depicting this world Kulkarni is not a chronicler of events; nor does he idealise pastoral stagnation as an escape from the humdrum existence of the modern city. He distills the poetry of life from the toils of the peasant adding to it a timeless dimension of authenticity by delving for the images he resurrects into the well of his own memories. His themes are not chosen with an eye to present thetypically. Indian; nor are they the choice of a painter insensible to the challenges of modern times. As an artist, what matters to him is simply the validity of experience in aesthetic expression. It makes him a contemporary without his needing to adopt postures; it marks him out as an Indian without his having to labour the point.

In the evolution of a style, the painter Kulkarni has been receptive to many influences. Like many an Indian artist, he has imbibed and incorporated the grace of classical Indian sculpture in his line, and added vigour to it by tapping the sources of miniature and folk-art. But unlike many of his contemporaries seeking to 'build' on tradition, he did not succumb to the vitiating notion of regarding artistic effort as the crystallisation of experience, but as the felicity for achieving decorative effect. What led to an empty formalism in others enabled him to achieve the liberation of form. His thorough academic training in the JJ. School of Arts and his studies from life lent a dexterity to his hand which could record an impression with remarkable precision and the barest of details. The vigorous constructions of the drawings of Picasso during the period of synthetic cubism added an overtone to the artist's already maturing formal understanding. The line emerged in the art of Kulkarni as a vital element in reinforcing and resurrecting the image built upon impressive planes of softly laid colours.

A superb draftsman, Kulkarni is also a master colourist. The fantastic vibrancy he achieves by the soft, light strokes of his brush casts an aura of light through and around the boldly and vigorously delineated forms; the swift strokes build up planes of colour which transform perspective space into aesthetic space, set up an orchestration which engulfs and entices the viewer into the unfathomable depths of a world created within the four corners of the canvas. His range is wide, and the eye moves with unanticipated delight from orange to amber to veridian in the unique harmonies he creates with the deft and sure touch of a master impresario. Rarely using the impasto, shunning the temptation of grafted textures, he is able to impart a rare clarity and simplicity to his images through the sheer manipulation of tonalities. His canvases have a freshness which does not brook over painting; the surface of the canvas can be felt through each maiden stroke of the brush.

In the evolution of his pictorial language, Kulkarni has retained and developed the elements of drawing as crucial to the unfolding of his elastic vision, as also his philosophy of life. It is through the delineation of his forms that he expresses the vast compassion he has for the sons of the soil. The lines defining form are also the vehicles of sympathetic comment, they pay silent homage to the stolidity of the uncomplaining peasant; they carry a touch of humane sarcasm which smiles at the postures of a madly restive world.

K.S. Kulkarni has traveled a long road since he took to signboard painting at the age of eleven after the death of his father in Poona. Since the days of early youth when he had to struggle night and day to earn his bread and pay his way through art school, he has taken long strides through an extremely prolific and fruitful oreer and now ranks amongst the most eminent of modern Indian painters. Success, however, has not been able to swell his head, just as he carries no bitterness for the price he has had to pay for earning the inalienable right of man to self — expression. For those who know him — and to meet him is to know him ifist matter of perpetual surprise as to how this tall and hefty man could be so gentle and kind, so unruffled and unassuming in a world mad with the desire for Power.

Kulkarni carries within him the supreme tranquility of a man in harmony with the cosmos, facing life's problems with the calm bearing of a sage. The personality of the artist is expressed with remarkable lucidity in his works, and each of his canvases is a little gift of peace and solace to the troubled Souls of his fellow men.

- Written in 1998 by J Swaminathan (1928-1994) eminent artist and historian; founder director, Roopankar, Museum of Fine Art, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal.