Meet Natvar Bhavsar, an artist unknown in his own land of birth

Bhavsar, over his long career, has created nearly 2,000 works, some of which feature in institutions such as Boston Museum of Fine Arts

I enter the DAG Modern in Mumbai with a sense of considerable anticipation. I am about to view the works of an artist whose creations I had only seen in catalogues or read about in essays. Natvar Bhavsar is a big name. And today, among the most widely collected Indian artists in the US, where he has been based since 1962. Over his long career, he has created nearly 2,000 works, some of which feature in institutions such as the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, as well as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R  Guggenheim Museum. He is also part of the last generation of “colour-field” painters, a style of abstract expressionism that gained ground in the US in the 1940s-50s.

In his country of birth, though, it is only now — when Bhavsar has turned 83 — that the first retrospective on his oeuvre is taking place, as part of the appropriately titled exhibition, “Homecoming”. As Kishore Singh, president and head (exhibitions and publications), DAG Modern, writes in the catalogue: “It remains a mystery why his work has been seen in America but almost not at all in India… In spite of a few eminent collectors who have his work, Natvar has remained inexplicably ignored — an anomaly we are happy to correct.”

I realise quickly that it’s one thing to read about works such as Vesaka and Gomatee, and entirely another to behold them in person, see them virtually breathing and throbbing with colour. Even among colour-field painters, Bhavsar occupies a unique position. Not only has he created an idiom that brings together American techniques and his Indian heritage, he is also perhaps the only artist to work with dry pigment and binder on canvas, using a screen strainer. Art historian Irving Sandler quotes Howard E Wooden, about Bhavsar at work, in his 1998 essay [first published in Natvar Bhavsar: Painting and the Reality of Colour]: “The process is…not carried out haphazardly for as he moves the screen strainer about over the paper or canvas field, he must control the rhythm of his own body movements and is concerned at all times about speed and about the distance between the screen and the field in order to ensure both the desired distribution and the density of the colour within any given area. As the minute particles fall upon the field, they adhere firmly to the clear binder.” This layering of colour could be repeated 40 or 200 times, thus making each work an extraordinary, unique artefact.

As I move from Badamee to Nandaa, the eye begins to sift through the nebulae-like clouds, of varying and subtle hues, to create its own meaning. Colour is merely the starting point of engagement for the viewer, who must then go on to interpret these works in the context of their own visual and emotional vocabulary. “People at first observe the physicality. They see the waves, focus on the extraordinary vistas. It helps them engage. I give them the freedom to go closer,” Bhavsar tells me. 

Even though Bhavsar has been based in the US for over five decades, he has retained his links with India. In fact, he has a beautifully designed house in Ahmedabad, which he visits when in the country. Born in the village of Gothava, in Gujarat, the artist first went to the US when he was accepted at the Philadelphia College of Art, after which he moved to New York. “My maternal family were printers. I have said in the past that I was born swimming in vats of colour,” he says. An inspiration in his formative years was Rasiklal Parikh, principal of C N School of Art, Ahmedabad, himself a realist painter who encouraged his students to draw and paint from nature. “Whenever we would travel, I would see him draw trees, water — it was like magic. It contained the lyricism of poetry and music,” says Bhavsar. In the US, he was inspired by the works of artists such as Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko — all members of the so-called “New York School”.

 

These rich experiences gave him the courage to be himself. “It was a period that prepared me to summon my inner force and spirit to make my presence there,” says Bhavsar. He sees himself as having been served by two cultures. “‘I am a product in every sense of the excitement of Indian culture. But I see no separation in it from the culture I have inherited. At the same time, I do not accept the cultural supremacy of one over another in art practice,” he has said.

There is a certain spirituality to his works, inspired by the cadence of music and the lyricism of Sanskrit. It’s no wonder then that his studio is his sacred space, into which he retreats to tap into an inner rhythm. “When I enter this space, New York disappears, the studio disappears and my own self disappears,” he says.

Natvar Bhavsar’s Veeroo

Gomatee

Nandaa I

Mrigyaa

Vesaka
“Homecoming” can be viewed at the DAG Modern, Mumbai, till January 25, 2018