Rough sketches on stray items of paper, notes detailing the construction of his subsequent masterpiece: this retrospective on S Nandagopal opens a window into the artists’ psyche
Rough sketches on stray items of paper, notes detailing the construction of his subsequent masterpiece: this retrospective on S Nandagopal opens a window into the artists’ psyche
Theirs was a “24/7 art house”.
Considering the legacy it proudly hosts — of seminal artist KCS Paniker, pioneer of the Madras Art Movement who based Cholamandal Artists’ Village and his son S Nandagopal, one of many final custodians of the Movement —conversations about artwork have been inevitable. And strewn on the eating desk have been spontaneous sketches and notes, typically hurriedly scribbled, on stray items of paper.
“The table was never clean!” Pallavi Nandagopal says, recalling her father stooped over the desk, tracing the start of an thought that might quickly come to life in metallic.
These sketches are a fascinating glimpse into S Nandagopal’s artistic course of: the artist broke floor in abstraction, utilizing the medium of sculpture.
Now neatly framed, they’re a part of a “mini-retrospective” on Nandagopal’s fifth yr of passing, at Focus Art Gallery.
Bhishma, the drawing
| Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
The assortment, which reveals his work from early 2000s until 2016, opens a window into the artists’ psyche, proper at that second an thought strikes.
Typical of the Madras Art Movement, Nandagopal had a robust base in drawing. “Sometimes, he would draw till the end of the sheet and realise there was no space. So he will take another piece, attach it and continue drawing,” says Pallavi.
The imperfections, tears, and haphazardly stuck-together items are all uncooked reminders of the quantity of onerous work that goes behind every completed piece of artwork.
Pallavi’s mom and the late artist’s spouse Kala Nandagopal, provides, “For a long time, these were hidden away as personal pieces. Many of the earlier sketches were probably just thrown away.” Sharing them with the general public, she says, is vital since these sketches would have in any other case been forgotten, in contrast to the sculptures.
S Nandagopal at his workspace
| Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
As they have been curating the sketches — there are 33 on show — they have been capable of join many with completed sculptures: the show has 11 such sculptures positioned in juxtaposition to the draft sketches. Bhishma, a mildly enameled sculpture that reveals one in all The Mahabharata’s pivotal characters reclining on the famed mattress of arrows is an identifiable copy of the drawing signed in 2014.
Alongside this, are 20 watercolors performed by the artist between 2014 and 2016. “During the peak summer months in Madras, we would encourage him not to get into the studio and work on sculptures. He would do watercolors, and drawing in those months, especially as he grew older,” says Pallavi.
Though he began off as a painter, Nandagopal’s admiration for seminal Indian sculptors like PV Janakiram and Dhanraj Bhagat, coupled with the will to interrupt away from his father’s mould and medium, steered him in the direction of copper, brass and chrome steel. Elements paying homage to South Indian mythology that characteristic within the work of artists a part of the Movement, are seen right here as properly.
Kala reaffirms that he was not a significantly non secular man. Yet, symbols and characters that he could have encountered in passing, usually stayed recent in his reminiscence, and later manifested in his work. “Earlier sculptures were inspired by the Hero Stone and Sati Stone concepts,” says Kala.
His curiosity in literature, significantly of Earnest Hemingway’s work, displays on his fishermen collection, an ode to the literary large’s Old Man and the Sea.
A watercolour work by Nandagopal performed between 2014 and 2016
| Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
All his enameled sculptures, with hints of color, are small in scale: “He often said that they were like jewels, almost,” says Pallavi. At the identical time, sculptures which are large in scale (12ft to 23ft), are sometimes simplified by the artist, making it extra accessible for public areas.
Photographs of Nandagopal alongside these monumental works are sprinkled by the narrative. The Mythic & The Magical, a 56-minute documentary that traces Nandagopal’s creative journey by a pleasant collage of hardly ever seen images from his youth, and accounts from artwork critics and journalists, might be screened on the opening days.
All the works are on sale. The present might be on from October 7 to 13, at Focus Art Gallery, Alwarpet. The movie screening might be held on October 7 and eight.
