Maneka Gandhi to sell folk art to raise funds

Maneka Gandhi's annual art charity to raise funds for her NGO, People for Animals, has become a fixture in the capital's social calendar for some years now. The event is eagerly awaited for the quality and novelty of the wares on offer, as for their affordability.

Just last August, she put up for sale 3,000 lithographs from British India, which had prices starting at as little as Rs 1,000.

But Gandhi is deviating from the familiar script with her most recent fundraiser. On sale are pichwais (religious folk art from Nathdwara), depictions of the deity Srinathji embellished with gemstones, Swarovsky crystals and pearls, done by artist Uma Kilachand. But it's the prices "" starting at Rs 1.8 lakh and going up to Rs 9.5 lakh for a large 4x4 canvas depicting 40 Shrinathjis "" that'll be a dampner for those who've come to associate Gandhi with affordable art.

The Kilachand show is a one-off; Gandhi's quick to assert that she won't be doing two shows a year. "We need about Rs 30 lakh for a pathology laboratory at the Sanjay Gandhi Animal Care Shelter and Hospital," she explains. There's also to be a show of more lithographs in Mumbai, for the first time, besides the annual August sale of things.

Last year's show of lithographs, of which only four were unsold, netted about Rs 2.5 crore, and was used to sponsor the 26 hospitals that the PFA supports, which need about Rs 5 lakh a month, besides the occasional dole to people writing in with SOS requests for funds, and to buy land for shelters and hospitals in Thiruvananthapuram and Kolkata.

It's with the support of the sponsors, however, that Gandhi has managed to keep prices of her artworks low. "We get the sponsors to buy the works," she says.

But in one respect, at least, the Kilachand exhibit is in keeping with Gandhi's earlier shows of contemporary photographs, Raja Ravi Varma lithographs, studio pottery, designer T-shirts, candles, and so on. They all demonstrate the same combination of a free-wheeling and keen aesthetic sense and the ability to anticipate market trends.

"I did a show, around four years ago, of such luminaries as M F Husain, Laxma Goud, S H Raza, Manjit Bawa where the works were priced at around Rs 60,000. Today, they're worth lakhs. Many of the lithographs sold last year are now worth Rs 6,000 or more," says the MP and animal rights crusader with pride.

For Kilachand, ever since her first public show at the Gallery Napean, Mumbai, in 2006, has built up quite a clientele among industrialist families, especially those who trace their roots to Gujarat. Already two of her works have been sold, even before the formal opening on March 7 at Delhi's Le Meridien Hotel.