There are barely a handful of artists in India who enjoy superstar status, and one among that very elite club is Atul Dodiya. The remarkable and prolific artist is back, opening the Mumbai gallery weekend at Chemould Prescott in the city, with a very special series of portraits.
The small-size canvases are individually of the many renowned names of Indian music artists – singers, composers and writers – from what is Hindi cinema’s golden years.
‘Radio Ceylon Paintings: Vol. I’ takes us back to a theme Dodiya visits again and again, cinema, being the film buff he professes to be. “I usually listen to music when I paint, and I love old Hindi songs. During the pandemic, I realised that Radio Ceylon is still on and one could listen to one’s old favourites. So they have these divisions, where they start with bhajans and then move on to old films’ songs, and they always end with KL Saigal. I listened, and I wanted to find more of these songs. And then I discovered a lyricist called Rajendra Krishnan, he had a beautifully structured face, and I painted it. Then I just began painting others in the business. Cinema has always had me in a thrall. I think if I had not been a painter I would have been a film director," Dodiya, 65, remembers.
We are meeting at the gallery a day before the glamour and commotion of the big art night begins, where the city’s cognoscenti dress up in their high heels trawling from gallery to gallery across town, sipping a glass of bubbly and blowing up a few lakhs of rupees (a guesstimate for Dodiya’s small-size works here is Rs 10-14 lakhs).
"On Saturdays, Doordarshan would show regional films – Marathi or Bengali or Tamil – or European films too," he says. Dodiya’s previous works have been informed by films of Satyajit Ray and Guru Dutt, and also of Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, and Federico Fellini, among others. "They were so different from Bollywood as we understood. One could say they were better or not, but the music from Hindi cinema was the most superior to anything else. I think cinema would have been a very difficult and expensive medium for me, painting is very easy."
Dodiya's portraits of Indian music artists | Amey Mansabdar
Picture credit: Amey Mansabdar
Picture credit: Amey Mansabdar
There is also the very secular image of Hindi cinema that Dodiya longs for. Artists of different cultures working together – Mohammed Rafi, Naushad, Suraiya, Noor Jehan, Shamshad Begum thrived in India. "After the Partition, many left, like Noor Jehan, Ghulam Haider, Nisar Bazmi. Once I watched an interview of Dilip Kumar and Noor Jenam, about 40-45 years after Partition, and it was such an emotional moment for them as well as for the audience," he says.
Dodiya remembers at school a teacher was spoken of for having a Muslim surname. He thought nothing of it, as his home was filled with the names of cinema’s legends being spoken of with much reverence by his film and music-loving parents. "They were part of our daily, living vocabulary. So why was this a thing?"
In 1992, when the Babri Masjid was demolished, Dodiya created a shutter painting. Does art have to be political? "I personally don't agree that art has to be political. A simple work of art with two apples on the table could be a masterpiece. And the whole epic Mahabharata could be an ordinary work of art. But I personally feel it is the artist's responsibility, any citizen's responsibility for that matter, to speak. Artistic joy is in sharing feelings," he offers.
Another abiding muse is Mahatma Gandhi, Dodiya has devoted more than 200 works to the Indian leader. "Gandhi is really about love for fellow human beings. The methods which he adopted in achieving freedom were so fascinating conceptually. If you see the structure of his ashram, his wearing khadi or just lifting a pinch of salt, these are all conceptual ideas. Today, when you see so much violence around you, and hatred among communities, you think of people like Gandhi."
Isn’t he the toughest muse? Every city in India has a Mahatma Gandhi road and statue, every police station, government office has his picture; he is the most omnipresent omniscient Indian. "But if you see how MF Husain painted him it is so different. I wanted to paint the way Gandhi looked. He was very lean, and walked fast, and I thought his body language was so unique. And to be so committed to one single goal, I thought that was inspiring."
Dodiya’s commitment was especially on display during the pandemic when he painted furiously every day, and created 366 watercolours (later shown at Kiran Nadar’s KNMA gallery in New Delhi). “Watercolours are very pure, you can't correct it easily. My wife paints using watercolours, and she would never give up if the work went out of control. But she would keep coming back to it. I thought I wanted to try it too, I especially enjoy it in the monsoon when the paper takes long to dry," he says.
Atul and Anju Dodiya have been married for more than three decades, and both retain their strong, individual and equally brilliant voices in figurative art. Their daughter Biraaj, who received her MFA from New York University, has beautifully come into her own as a multimedia and abstract artist too.
What does Atul as a father and an artist think of his daughter’s work? "I like her work very much, she shows her political concerns very well. There is a feeling of loss or coming to terms with situations very well. We only learned to react and be emotional about situations, her work is so much more than that," he says. "I learn so much from her." Including Instagram? “Yes,” he laughs.
Who occupies more wall space in the Dodiya household? "Our other artist friends," he smiles. But dinner table conversations revolve around art, colours and pigments, cinema and literature to use, he admits, and the family are each other’s "ruthless" critics.
The art world is filled with stories of how down-to-earth Dodiya is, and especially how he makes time for art students, including those of his alma mater Sir JJ School of Art. "I had the support of wonderful mentors like Sudhir Patwardhan, Tyeb Mehta, and Gieve Patel. Akbar Padamsee, he actually came to my Ghatkopar home from his Nepeansea Road home to convince my father. In your formative years, there is so much anxiety about how to make it in the business, and whether you will get to a gallery or not, or to stick to your art or make commercial stuff. I’m still a student, I have some experience, yes, but I think it is important to make young people confident."
