Artfully selected, lovingly sheltered

Artist Manisha Gera Baswani collects art as voraciously as she paints. A clear case of putting your money where your mouth is.

The well-known painter Salvador Dali once said, "There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction." Delhi-based artist Manisha Gera Baswani must on most days feel a bit like that, given the extensive art collection that she has built up along with her husband Rahul Baswani. She says, "For the first four years of our marriage we did not have sofas to sit on or a dining table, but we sure did have interesting walls."

Baswani, who was taught by well-known painter M Ramachandran (to date, she reverentially calls him her guru), started collecting art while she was still an art student. She says, "Before I got married I would collect the odd piece of work." From that small start, her home now could give an art gallery a major inferiority complex, such is the repertoire that hangs on its walls.

Despite the size of the collection "" Baswani is reluctant to put a figure to the actual number of paintings that she owns "" she says, "My collection is not huge, it's an intimate collection. We have bought art for art's sake." Artists collected include A Ramachandran, Laxma Goud, K Subramanian, Nasreen, Himmat Shah, Zarina Hashmi, Amitava Das, Probir Gupta and Valsan Kolleri. Among her own peers that find place in her home are Anandjit Ray, Gopi Krishna and of the even younger lot are Minal Damani, Tanmoy Samant, Zeeshan Mohmad and Attiya Shankat. One-offs include Jairam Patel, Rekha Rodwittiya, Surendran, Neelima Sheikh and Nandlal Bose.

In today's heated art market, finding someone who collects art may not seem such an oddity, but in Baswani's case it is the fact that she collects even as she herself is part of the art fraternity. Having answered this question on a regular basis, she puts it in perspective even before I ask her to. She says, "As an artist if I expect other people to buy my work, then I should demonstrate that same confidence that I expect from my buyers by spending my money on other artists."

Initially hampered by insufficient funds, the couple often bought paintings on installments, and galleries, she says, were very helpful. "Sometimes," she adds, "we would take as much as a year to pay up for a painting." Another way that the Baswanis beat the money crunch was by buying sketches and etchings, which cost a lot less than the big works.

As an artist, Baswani finds that "Indian contemporary art doesn't get reflected in my work but it gives me visual joy." Visual clues for her work come from the miniatures, bazaar paintings, reverse glass paintings, oleographs and other work from an era long gone in the history of Indian painting. She says, "I see these as tools for my work. We all need visual inputs in life." The boom in the Indian art market has meant that Baswani now finds many works out of her reach. She and her husband now concentrate more on buying younger and sometimes still undiscovered artists.

But make no mistake: Baswani, though neck-deep in art, is no snob. Paintings and sculptures sit cheek-by-jowl with curios picked up from different parts of the world. She says, "I think my husband and I are collectors by nature." A fat Sumo wrestler from Japan sits comfortably facing one of Baswani's own works. A wall connecting the living area with the bedrooms has numerous paintings on it, and in one corner is a decorative piece "maybe", she says, scratching her head, "from Mexico".

And that's pretty much the tone and tenor of this home. Owls picked up from different parts of the world keep company with contemporary painters in one room; in the same room on one surface is a skeleton complete with a hat, again from Mexico, next to a stunning sculpture. Says Baswani, "We don't match anything in this house but it all comes together." And for this she credits her husband, who picks up a lot of these curios on his frequent trips abroad, as well as the fact that they both have a similar aesthetic sense. Was she prescient in that the man she married shares her deep and abiding love for art? Or was it just plain old lady luck smiling bountifully on her? She reveals that her first date with her husband was at a Souza exhibition. That's when you realise lady luck has been kind to Baswani.

But it takes more than luck to put together such an eclectic collection. It takes deep love. And in the case of the Baswanis that deep love is for Indian art.