Ode to an artist

Better known as an advertising man, few have forgotten that Jhupu Adhikari is really an artist.

Jhupu Adhikari turned 80 recently and got the best gift possible "" a gathering of family and friends (some literally unearthed from places far away), an exhibition of his works at Gallery Alternatives, and a book on his life as an artist contributed by critics, colleagues, Adhikari himself, and of course, his wife (the redoubtable Shona), children and grandchildren.

For the many people who have known Adhikari as a commercial artist based in Kolkata, this has been a fine moment of discovery. Yes, Adhikari always painted "" but how many knew that he painted really well, and should wear the tag of artist somewhat more prominently than that of an advertising man.

In this, he has a huge supporter in Santo Datta who crows at the fact that at the 13th annual Academy of Fine Arts exhibition for 1948-49, it was Adhikari who walked off with a gold medal for his watercolour, besting other greats such as M F Husain (who got the silver), K H Ara (honourable mention), K K Hebbar, Jaypee Gangooly, S K Bakre, K S Kulkarni, K C S Panicker, S H Raza, Ram Kumar, N S Bendre...

The others stayed on to paint, but Adhikari who came from a professional family "" chose to work in advertising.

He grew up in times that saw the peak of the anti-British movements, was shaped by nationalist events, witnessed the Bengal famine and partition "" all cataclysmic events for anyone with the sensitivity of an artist.

The decision to join art college was spontaneous, and when he won the Academy's gold medal in 1949, he says the names of M F Husian and K H Ara "would not have made any impression on me, since both of them were comparatively unknown to the art world at that time".

Not surprising then that he chose to begin his career as a trainee with Grant Advertising. Of course, he was lucky to be able to secure admission at Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, and gained hugely from exposure to a cosmopolitan society of students and experiences in London and Paris.

Advertising was inevitable "" indeed, he had trained for it, and Adhikari went on to create breakthrough ads and logos, and spear accounts "" but it is only since the nineties that he has begun painting continuously and uninterruptedly.

Adhikari's work ranges freely from landscapes to the figurative, as gallerist Manu Dosaj of Gallery Alternatives in Gurgaon admits: "Give him anything in his hand, he does it well."

While Adhikari's oeuvre has included still lifes, portraits and so on, he has been able to comment on society (such as after the Nellie massacres or the tsunami), as well as through his critically acclaimed Clown series that brought him a good deal of renown in the nineties.

The figure, which Santo Datta calls Adhikari's alter ego, clearly "carries a formidable load of experience of his encounters with darkness, hidden behind his painted face".

He may have remained away from active artistic pursuits for the bulk of his career, but Adhikari was never divorced from it, and his comeback has been a moment of triumph.

"I was rather glad that my days of advertising and other commercial pursuits were at an end," he writes in A Life Drawing, "I could now go back to where I really belonged. Among my paints and canvases, painting what I pleased, when I pleased."

And despite a galloping market in art, Dosaj says he has stuck to "very, very low prices when you remember he and M F Husain were selling for the same price in 1949, because he wants to have the freedom to have his art accessible to people from all walks of life. He says he has enjoyed doing the works, so it's for others to enjoy it now."