Style, the albatross

At current prices, the National Gallery of Modern Art's retrospective of Satish Gujral's almost six-decade-old career as an artist is worth anything between Rs 10 crore and Rs 20 crore. But the Gujral family isn't thinking of the monetary value of the 200-odd works of art that have been mounted in the galleries.

As they picnic with a hamper of home-baked cake (courtesy Gujral's grand-daughter) and flasks of tea, Gujral is more concerned with the "honour" of it all.

An 80th birthday a few weeks before was the catalyst for the family and NGMA to hoist the event as a celebration "" including a book (written by critics Gayatri Sinha and Santo Datta) and the retrospective. But at 80, Gujral is still not past the prime of his life.

He steers journalists by the elbow through the various rooms where the exhibition has been mounted, a boyish glint in his eye, the energy of the manic painter evident in the surround of six decades of work "" some of which is awesome, some, in retrospect, perhaps even embarrassing. But he isn't apologetic about his oeuvre.

"I've constantly moved from one technique to another, from one style to another," he says; "to find something different, and it has not been easy." Nor is it easy to label him, he tells you "" at most, you can say he's from Delhi, but he hasn't been clubbed with any movement, any school.

"As a creative person, if you're lucky you create a style," he points out, "and if you're luckier, you get recognised for it." But warns: "If you get recognition, you dare not change your signature style because it means struggling again to gain recognition." It's something he's always balked at because, he says, "It means living in the image people have of you and not your own image."

One thing the retrospective defines is Gujral's endless experimentations "" from the brooding grief of Partition to the school of realism he began with before opting for the nuances of abstraction learned from his stint with Mexican masters (David Siquerios, Jose Orozco), to abstraction in the seventies and pop-collages in the eighties, before settling into a more langurous phase in the nineties, and finally, his absorption, in the new century, with youth and the body language (or, as he describes it, "the poetry") of sports.

"Going to Mexico was the most important point of my life," he says in hindsight. "It's there I was told to look in my own backyard, at my own traditions, to discover my past," "" different, he says, from the experience of his peers who went to the West and were told to reject their past.

As an artist, Gujral is aware of his immense talent "" painter, muralist, sculptor, architect "" and as a Punjabi displays an abundance of affection. Still, he shows a capacity towards modesty: "I am not a great artist," he suggests, "my only boast is that nobody can accuse me of staying still, of living in an image that other people have of me."

Nor will he pick a favourite period, nor agree that Brand Gujral is something to reckon with. "Any style has a limit, it can be stretched only to a certain point. Beyond that it becomes stale. Yet, people like repetition because it does not challenge their imagination. The more an artist repeats himself, the more popular he becomes," he castigates unthinking art connoisseurs and collectors.

Gujral has stretched himself often, but never his art, so the signature has never worn thin. "He is," says NGMA director Rajeev Lochan, "a complete artist." We think he is a complete person.