Achuthan Kudallur was a colourist who lived and dreamt his colours without the intervention of forms. They were like music, like waves -- at times tranquil, at times turbulent. Those who are used to forms might have been baffled by the works that were both a celebration of colours and an expression of pangs. On the other hand, those who know what abstraction is would stand mesmerised before these tiny oceans.
Incidentally, he began his artistic career as a fiction writer and later started doing figurative paintings, before finding his calling in abstraction. Always, he did purely figurative illustrations for literary works and longed to get back to writing. Once he moved to abstraction, it did not take much time for him to stamp his mark as a distinct abstract painter in India. What made him different from his abstractionist predecessors and contemporaries is that his paintings transcended the splashing character that was often the common trait of abstract artists. Only a magician can go to the level of abstraction without making it narrative in any manner, while comprehending as to what formed the subtler levels of image making. Achuthan had that skill.
He was an artist who was celebrated among the artist fraternity in India for adhering to his passion for colours, but in his native Kerala, he was not that well-known. Even now, there are people who believe Achuthan is part of Cholamandalam. Though his career began along with the Madras movement, he had always been outside its purview — physically and philosophically. In relation to the Cholamandalam art movement, we can see that Achuthan moved a step towards a very universal language.
I was lucky to maintain a warm personal relation with him, and we were together at many camps in many parts of India. While assuming office as the chairman of the Kerala Lalithakala Akademi, he was among the first whom I called and shared news of the development. “When someone who knows about art and is active in art comes to such a position, it will benefit everybody,” he said.
Despite being an outsider, he was abreast of the developments in Kerala — be it politics, film or art. Achuthan had a clear understanding as to from where the source of energy for his artistic work comes, what it is and how it works. Perhaps, the colours of joy and pain came back to life in Achuthan’s abstract compositions. But, did his native place reciprocate in the same manner?
Then, his sense of humour kept him young at heart, as vibrant as his colours. Humour is the viscosity that drives the artist towards such compositions. Kerala still has a lot to learn from that painter who migrated to Chennai half a century ago, carrying within the memories of his native place, finally to dissolve in the ocean of colours, eternally, orphaning all those canvases.
(The writer is the chairman of Kerala Lalithakala Akademi)