Devastating floods destroys murals, paintings

Paintings, sculptures and other valuable artifacts in the personal collection of many an artist were irreparably damaged in the flood.

Shaju Thuruthil, Head of Fine Arts Department, Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, in front of the paintings at his residence which was destroyed during the flooding of the Periyar river | A Sanesh

KALADY : Artists have borne the brunt of the recent deluge. Paintings, sculptures and other valuable artifacts in the personal collection of many an artist were irreparably damaged in the flood. Saju Thuruthil, head, department of mural painting, Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, is one such victim. The recent flood washed away in its wake his works of 30 years of painstaking effort.

According to Saju, his house was Kerala’s first residential art gallery. “I built it as a temple of murals. A place where people interested in learning about and doing murals could converge without any inhibitions. Anybody could come in at any time.

It was a novel concept,” he said. Today, however, the destruction wrought by the deluge has left the artist devastated. “Some very old paintings that I had gathered over the past 30 or so years along with the ones that I had toiled over for more than a year to finish have been lost. It is not the monetary part of the loss that makes me emotionally wrung. An 80-year-old painting done by my teacher and gifted to me has been destroyed,” he said. 

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“Now my gallery looks more like a ghost house. The walls bereft of the murals look forlorn. I have no idea how I am going to replace them. However, I am happy that the scroll paintings that I and my students had slogged over for a year have escaped the deluge with minor damages,” he said. He had even done murals on furniture. “Only bits and pieces remain of them.

The entire house had been planned and constructed to be a gallery with live installations,” he said.  When he realized that his long hours of painting works was affecting his son’s studies, he built another residential gallery on the bank of Periyar. “I was going to hand it over to Muziris on August 19. But the river inaugurated it for me and dumped mud and silt as a gift,” Saju said.

But he is confident that he will prevail. “I build the entire setup without any monetary benefit in mind. Everything was to be free. People could come in and stay for four days to learn about murals,” he said.He now plans to revive his project and contribute the proceeds of the inaugural function to CMDRF.