Arpana Caur can fool you into mistaking her quiet determination for reticence. Her fierce canvas—Caur is known for large paintings, several of which are part of permanent collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Rockefeller Collection, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi—is all about boldness and laying bare the dark underbelly of troubled times.
This dyed-in-the-wool Dilliwalla, who has famously done series on Time, Guru Nanak, and the Sikh Riots of 1984—in fact, her painting for the Art NOW exhibition is also based on the theme of Time—is largely a self-taught artist. “I am extremely fascinated by the concept of night and day, two sides of the same coin,” says the 65-year-old. Daughter of the legendary Punjabi writer, Ajeet Caur, she took up Literature in college. But you cannot keep an artist away from his/her passion for long. In 1979, she was awarded a scholarship to London’s famous St Martin’s School of Art, but was back in two months. “I was too homesick,” she smiles. But by then she had started work on her mammoth paintings.
“Delhi was different then with a handful of exhibition places. And no one wanted to exhibit a newcomer like me. In 1980, I got an invitation to exhibit at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai,” she reminisces. Along with her mother, she travelled to Mumbai via train carrying 20 paintings rolled and kept atop a berth. Post a back-breaking work of installing the paintings through the night, when the duo returned in morning, they found MF Husain sitting on the ground and taking pictures. “He was my first buyer,” Caur smiles. Soon others such as Kekoo Gandhy and Parmeshwar Godrej followed. The show was a sellout, establishing Caur as an artist of note. Husain remained a lifelong mentor. “When he died in exile, I set up an installation, ‘Do Gaz Zameen’, at the Lalit Kala Akademi denoting the grave that was denied to him in his homeland,” she says sorrowfully.
Caur’s studio-cum-gallery, the picturesque Academy of Fine Arts and Literature, opposite the Siri Fort auditorium, was actually built by her mother in memory of her elder sister. Today, the academy offers vocational training for less-privileged girls, besides showcasing the mother-daughter’s personal collection of Indian miniatures and an extensive library on SAARC literature, art books, and Hindi and Punjabi literature. “I remember telling mummy that we shouldn’t get into this. But she was adamant. She wanted to promote the arts. It is getting difficult to manage since we get no funds from the government, but we are trying our best to carry on,” she says.
The artist had been commissioned by the Hiroshima Museum of Modern Art in 1995 for an artwork to mark the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings. She says, “When they contacted me, the letter addressed me as ‘Mr Arpana Caur’. I decided not to correct them, for the other artists were all male and I thought what if they withdraw my name once they know I am a woman?” The environment has always been a big concern for her and unlike many of her peers, she took to street art and public painting at a time when it was anything but fashionable to voice her concern.
From fighting to save trees to stopping land grabbers from destroying Delhi’s heritage, Caur says her fight will continue even as Delhi becomes more commercial by the day. “All I want to do is, take care of mummy, devote time to art and make a statement through my artworks. After all, this is what I do best,” says the artist.