When, some time last year, I began research for a curatorial project on the artist Avinash Chandra, I knew it was not going to be easy, but didn't realise then how hard it would be either. The Simla-born artist seemed to have made a dazzling appearance on the New Delhi art scene in the early 1950s before disappearing from India to make a career in London and New York. He was invited to exhibit mid-career at the Lalit Kala Akademi in the early '80s, apart from which his work was not shown in the country. And, yet, his paintings are part of the collection at the National Gallery of Modern Art; he claimed a joint prize during the Akademi's first national awards in 1954; a documentary was made on him by BBC in 1962; and critics wrote excitedly about his talent in England.
In spite of his disengagement with the world of Indian art at the time, his career got off to a brilliant start and practice in London (coincidentally at the same time as F N Souza in that city), it seemed odd that there were such few acquaintances into whose memories or experiences I could tap. Those such as Arpita Singh, Paramjit Singh and Gopi Gajwani recalled his brief stint as a teacher at the Delhi Polytechnic (now College of Art), while Krishen Khanna shared some stories of his London years where he often exhibited and visited. My main source was his Jamaican widow (Chandra died in 1991) who recalled anecdotes that humanised him for me - he liked painting in the nude! - since there was scarce source material to read.
With the opening of the exhibition in New York, things have changed a bit. Close members of his family have expressed their willingness to associate with future projects, while a few have dredged up less flattering references to his previous marriage and behaviour - and though this impact on him as a person and an artist is important, contrarily, I have become acquainted with a number of people in the two cities where he lived who have reservoirs of fond memories of him as an artist, friend and host (he appeared to have been a great bon vivant and cook).
Since Chandra's art was collected not so much by Indian collectors as by native residents of London and New York, his work is too widely dispersed to hope to document with any measure of success than has been currently achieved. There is little doubt that the quality is remarkable, and increasingly paintings have been showing up up as auction lots at prices that can best be described as attractive. Those from the '50s to the '70s are particularly effective as they map his journey from landscapes in oil to watercolours on paper of what I refer to as humanscapes. His use of form and colour is distinctive and sets him apart as an artist whose work is not confined or defined by geographies.
How we view Chandra's work will change when the retrospective travels to India and fills in the voids in people's memory of the artist who, quite simply, went AWOL from the country of his birth. When that happens, hopefully a legacy will be created and more research will reveal his artistic involvement with the country of his residence - a 37-ft long glass mural is part of the listing of historical buildings of architectural interest in Lancashire. But even as Chandra's remarkable journey unfolds, I am left to wonder about other Indian artists abroad whose stories remain, as yet, untold.
Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated
