Ravi Varma's colours preserved in print. The book being released by Shree Kumar Varma.
APPARENTLY, RAJA Ravi Varma's celebrated paintings and prints have a habit of turning up in the most unexpected places.
"There's a story of how someone went for lunch to the house of an old aristrocratic family in Kerala. After eating he went to wash his hands and noticed his wet towel was rubbing against a colourful surface. He lifted it to find it hung over an original Ravi Varma. The family had it for years and hadn't even realised its value," says the painter's great grandson, writer Shree Kumar Varma.
On Tuesday evening, Shree Kumar Varma released `Popular Indian Art Raja Ravi Varma and The Printed Gods of India' by Erwin Neumayer (a writer and archaeologist working on the prehistoric art of South Asia) and Christine Schelberger (an artist who teaches art history in Vienna) and Sharon Apparao, Gallery Owner, received the first copy. They also used the occasion to give their audience of assorted bookworms and art buffs a crash course on display prints (`oleographs' to the high brow types.)
The brightly illustrated book traces the evolution of printing in India beginning with the establishment of Ravi Varma's imported Lithographic Press in Mumbai at the end of the 19th Century. Till then the only prints available in India were from Germany, and even the work of Indian artists had to be sent abroad to be printed. Then, with the establishment of the press Ravi Varma completely changed the country's art scene.
He published millions of copies of his paintings and other religious icons and slowly the prints `became the most influential medium of visual communication in what was then a socially and culturally fragmented society,' according to the book. However, to the art critics of old the loud, bright and flamboyant pictures were nothing more than kitschy imitations.
Today, they're priceless. "They document the past and are a part of history," says Sharon Apparao explaining why the prints of the past, which were once practically worthless are now treasured.
"They drew together the country as a whole," adds Shree Kumar Varma. "Anything visual goes beyond language. Even the awareness of the freedom struggle was spread by these admittedly garish and fantastic prints."
By their own admission the writers scoured the country for prints.
They went though warehouses of traditional picture framing shops by sifting through old dusty stocks to find old prints, buried under piles of paper and forgotten for decades.
Explaining why Raja Ravi Varma's family never thought of collecting the prints, Shreekumar Varma adds, "It was thought to be available all through. Suddenly, the demand began and families started giving them away."
By Shonali Muthalaly
Photo: N. Balaji
