One of India’s big name artists collaborates with a Mumbai serigraph studio to make limited edition prints of Burman’s fine art over silk threads.

Lavesh Jagasia of The Serigraph Studio, honored Indian artist Sakti Burman, and Mumbai’s old Pundole Art Gallery in Fort took three years to complete an exhibition of limited edition serigraphs titled The Complete Collection by Sakti Burman which launches in Mumbai today. They will go to show in Chennai, Bangalore, New Delhi and Kolkata.

Whenever an artist print-maker produces an original stencil print using the hand-held screen-printing method these are classified as serigraphs — the medium for this exhibition. In Latin ‘seri’ means silk and in Greek ‘graphos’ means to draw, hence the word ‘serigraph’ literally means to draw through silk.
“I am very enthusiastic towards this new dimension to the art world,” Jagasia says. “After doing a thorough research of the visual arts scene in the developed and mature art markets, the obvious answer was serigraphs as this type of print offers a wide colour spectrum and by virtue of the inks being applied layer by layer it gives a perspective and depth to the images. These prints are regarded as ‘multiple originals’ by the artist. The market for multiple originals is huge and here to stay.”

You can assume Jagasia knows what he’s talking about. The list of artists he’s collaborated with at The Serigraph Studio include Indian masters such as S.H. Raza, Paritosh Sen, Jogen Chowdhury, Ram Kumar, Jehangir Sabavala, K. G. Subramanyam, Rameshwar Broota, Ganesh Haloi, Lalu Prasad Shaw and Manu Parekh among others.

The 24 limited edition serigraphs for sale at this show are based on choicest Burman paintings encompassing the last two decades of this legendary painter’s artistic evolution. Burman’s harmonious merging of imagery from the east and west comes naturally to an Indian artist who has lived most of his life in Paris, but is profoundly in touch with his Indian roots.

February 10 marks Sadequain’s 23rd death anniversary. Sadequain Foundation estimates he painted close to 15,000 paintings, murals, calligraphies and drawings. Most of his work was gifted to institutions, individuals, acquaintances, and total strangers. Sadequain, at the time of his death was painting the stupendous ceiling mural at the Frere Hall, which though left incomplete, nonetheless, adorns the ceiling of the historic building.

Sadequain is arguably responsible for the renaissance of Islamic calligraphy in Pakistan. A review of the history of calligraphic art in the country during the decades of the 1950s and ’60s reveals that there was minimal activity in this genre of art form. Syed Amjad Ali wrote in his book, Painters of Pakistan, that after Sadequain’s first exhibition of calligraphies in December 1968, “For next fifteen years or sixteen years, a veritable Niagara of painterly calligraphy flowed from his pen and brush. He initiated painterly calligraphy and set the vogue for it in Pakistan.”

Calligraphic art had enjoyed a revered status in the subcontinent, reaching its pinnacle during the glorious days of the Mughal Empire. But after the downfall of the empire, calligraphic art fell so far out of favour that in post-partition Pakistan, it was considered to be a mere vocational skill and not a serious genre of creative art. Searching for a new form of expression, Sadequain commemorated Ghalib’s anniversary by illustrating his poetry in 1968. To enhance the paintings, he inscribed Ghalib’s verses in Urdu to append the paintings, and that experiment later led to more calligraphic inscriptions in the Arabic language.

In a manner similar to his figurative paintings, Sadequain followed the same principles in his calligraphic art. His calligraphies represent the most radical departure from the established norms for hundreds of years. The centuries-old guarded traditions, watchful eyes of the religious police, or pitfalls of the uncharted waters did not deter him from going where few had ventured before him. He invented his own iconography and produced a dizzying array of calligraphic marvels at such large scales that had not been witnessed in recent history. His art became the most effective ambassador for the country and his impact was so profound, that on a number of occasions, Pakistan was represented in international forums only by Sadequain’s masterpieces.

Special mention must be made of some of Sadequain’s major works, which are spread over Pakistan, India, and the Middle East. He inscribed four versions of complete sets of the beautiful Verse, Sura-e-Rehman; the first two versions of the Verse, which consisted of 31 panels, have been preserved, one at Staff College Lahore and one with a private collector. Another version, consisting of 40 panels was painted on transparent cellophane. The fourth version of the Verse was painted on marble slabs, which Sadequain gifted to the citizens of Karachi in a ceremony held on the lawns of the Frere Hall in 1986. The intent was to place the complete set of 40 marble slabs on permanent display at the Gallery Sadequain of Frere Hall. But soon after Sadequain passed away, all forty panels disappeared from the premises, leaving no trace behind.

During the early 1970s, Sadequain completed several large calligraphies for the historic Lahore Museum, and gifted them to the citizens of Lahore. Eight of these large calligraphic panels, each measuring approximately 20 x 20 feet, are on display in the Islamic Gallery of the museum. He also inscribed Sura-e-Yaseen on to a wooden panel measuring 260 feet long and gifted it to the Islamic Gallery of the Lahore Museum. A large calligraphic mural adorns the power station at Abu Dhabi, which Sadequain completed in 1980.

During his stay in India, end of 1981 through 1982, Sadequain painted several large calligraphic paintings and murals. One of the most significant calligraphic works was the rendition of the 99 panels of Asma-e-Husna (the beautiful names of God) that he inscribed on the circular wall of the rotunda, which towers an imposing five stories high in the Indian Institute of Islamic Studies at Delhi. This rendition of 99 panels is one of the three complete sets he finished in his life. In addition to the calligraphic work at the Indian Institute of Islamic Studies at Delhi, Sadequain painted or sculpted calligraphic works at Aligarh Muslim University, Ghalib Academy, Jamia Millia, and the tomb of Tipu Sultan. In his customary practice, Sadequain gifted all this work to the Indian authorities. In addition to painting the murals and calligraphies in India, he exhibited his works at Delhi, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Aligarh, Banaras, and several other cities.

Evelyn Haas, philanthropist, patron of the arts, matriarch of one of the Bay Area’s most prominent families and expert fly-fisherwoman, died Wednesday in San Francisco at age 92.

Mrs. Haas, widow of Walter A. Haas Jr., led the family foundation, the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund, which has contributed more than $364 million to hundreds of community and cultural organizations that make the Bay Area what it is. They include the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the restoration of Crissy Field and The Chronicle’s Season of Sharing Fund. The Haas family also owned the Oakland Athletics from 1980 to 1995, a period cherished, and missed, by many Bay Area baseball fans.

Friends and civic leaders said that Mrs. Haas was as comfortable wading in a trout stream or walking around Crissy Field as she was enjoying a concert at Davies Symphony Hall or perusing an exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She was passionate about those interests, but more concerned that everyone would get to share them.

“She didn’t like to talk about her philanthropy,” said Ira Hirschfield, president of the foundation. “What was really important to Evie was that it make a difference and touch people’s lives in tangible ways.

“It was about leveling the playing field so that all families could live and raise their families with equality and dignity, to make sure all families had an equal chance to enjoy their lives,” he said.

Greg Moore, executive director of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, said that desire was what drove Mrs. Haas to lead the effort to restore Crissy Field, which was completed in 1999. “Today it is just a beautiful place, which is what she wanted – to create a beautiful place that everyone could use and enjoy.”

From the time she studied for her bachelor’s degree at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, Mrs. Haas had a passion for the arts. After she and her husband married and moved to San Francisco in 1940, she grew to love the Symphony and SFMOMA. She was a longtime leader on the museum’s board, and she and her husband were instrumental in raising the $95 million to build the new museum in 1995. He died later that year.

“SFMOMA was the love of her life – except for her husband, Walter, and her children,” said Elaine McKeon, former president of the museum. “But she was just the sweetest person, interested in everyone she met. She was a real mentor to me.”

San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas said Mrs. Haas, who served on the Symphony board for 40 years, loved classical music and wanted others to learn to love it, too. She helped to do that by funding “Keeping Score: MTT on Music,” a classical music program for children on public radio, television and the Internet.

“You got the impression from Evie that she had a real passion and interest in the Symphony, that it was a delight for her and that she wanted to share it with other people,” Thomas said.

But Haas didn’t confine her interests to the arts and philanthropy. She was an avid fly fisher – an interest she picked up from her husband. In 1979, she co-authored the book “Wade a Little Deeper, Dear,” considered a classic among fly fishers.

“I met her through her foundation,” said John McCosker, senior scientist at the California Academy of Sciences, and a friend, “but I also knew her because she and Wally were mad about fly fishing. That was a side of her most people didn’t know.”

Mrs. Haas is survived by her three children: Robert D. Haas, chairman emeritus and past CEO of Levi Strauss & Co., and his wife, Colleen Gershon Haas; Betsy Haas Eisenhardt, civic leader and volunteer, and her husband, Roy Eisenhardt; and Walter J. Haas, co-chairman of the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund and past chairman and CEO of the Oakland Athletics, and his wife, Julie Salles Haas. She is also survived by six grandchildren, Elise Haas, Jesse Eisenhardt, Sarah Eisenhardt, Simone Haas Zumsteg, Charlotte Haas Prime and Walter A. Haas III; great-grandson Andy Zumsteg; and great-granddaughter Olivia Evelyn Prime.

For 15 years, Qatar-based Indian artist Smita Aloni has been painting to help preserve a dying art form which dates back 1500 AD.

Aloni was the featured artist on the first-ever art exhibition recently organised by Standard Chartered Bank Qatar. Bank officials, parents, children and guests attended the successful one-day exhibition held at Standard Chartered D-Ring Road Branch.

Phad painting is a traditional Indian art form based on an epic in praise of the good deeds of King Pabuji. It is derived from the word ‘par’ which literally means ‘scroll’ in the local language. The scroll painting which was originally about 15ft in length and four to five feet high was used by storytellers to narrate the epic.

“This art form is not commonly known since it was restricted to one part of India,” Aloni explained.

She said the art form has been preserved through family tradition passing it from one generation to another but is threatened to disappear because very few artists nowadays practice the art form since it requires a lot of patience to make and does not guarantee good financial rewards.

Using hand made brushes and natural colours sourced from India, Aloni creates her paintings following very detailed style for them to look authentically phad. Her wide collection spans 10 years of dedication to the traditional art.

‘Scenes from the Palace’, ‘Procession of King’ and ‘Mythological Elephant’ were some of Aloni’s notable paintings exhibited during the exposition.

Apart from being a professional artist, Aloni also teaches painting to children, from whom she said she derived much inspiration from.

An exhibition of dozens of works by the children was also held. The paintings revolved around a theme on French Art following the technique of legendary French painter Rousseau.

The paintings depicted animals, forests, flowers, sun, moon and other objects of nature. Collage and paper mache art including glass, tile and ceramic paintings were also put on display.

“For more people to appreciate this art form, artists should make it simpler, such as lessening the number of characters for each painting,” Aloni said, as she showed examples of silk paintings in which she focused on just one central character.

The Whitechapel Gallery’s scan of photography from the Indian subcontinent is enormous. One hundred and fifty years, three countries, several hundred works (from the documentary tradition, the private, the commercial, from contemporary-art … ). Poor photography, still the last medium in which such sweeping gestures are considered to make any sense. The result of the ambition of this show is that it has to skate almost trivially over vast acreages of great interest. It makes a wonderful invitation to seek more detail, but it provides little detail itself.

The impulse for the exhibition is both laudable and negative. The very rich presence (both past and present) of photography in south Asia has many aspects which do not fit into patterns dictated by the history of photography as written in Europe and the United States. So this exhibition, unlike many earlier, seeks to show only works by photographers from the region and to allow their expressions of cultural values to be heard in their own context. This is worthy enough, but it is lopsided. From the earliest days of photography in the mid-19th century, its development on the subcontinent was influenced by developments in Europe. To try to look the other way is perhaps a necessary shove to a pendulum which has been stuck on the Eurocentric side for too long, but it is an adversarial position and not a neutral scholarly one.Spread over two floors of the large gallery space, the show looks oddly drab on the lower floor and much more lively above. It is arranged thematically and not by date, and the curators follow five threads (the portrait, performance, the family, the street, and the body politic). These are more or less arbitrary, and they intersect often.

The grouping allows for lively comparisons, and provides a minimum of necessary guidance to European viewers in a maze of mostly new names and stories. But the stories, in truth, are better told in the book which accompanies the exhibition. On the walls are lots of pictures with minimal context, a kaleidoscope of snippets.

It is full of fascinating and lovely things. Here is a doorkeeper from the 1880s by the great Lala Deen Dayal, tiny against his massive studded door, with the sweep of shadow across the great door matched by the sweep of his dark cloak across his belly. Here is an exciting construction from 2007 by Rashid Rana in which the repeating pattern of the surface treatment of the twin towers in New York is made of thousands of little views of street-scenes in Lahore – Rana’s point being that the great shining vertical cities are often made by the labour of those who live in the sprawling dusty horizontal ones.

Here, too, is Umrao Singh Sher-Gil prancing about in his underpants on a bed in Paris looking like the villainous fakir in the “Tintin” books. Far from being a comic figure, however, Sher-Gil is of great importance in the story of Indian photography. Born to an aristocratic Punjabi family in 1870, he was a linguist and classical scholar as well as an enthusiast for craft skills like carpentry and calligraphy. He married a Hungarian opera singer and spent a large proportion of the 1920s and 1930s in Budapest and Paris, from where he brought back all that was newest in photography. But he had been an enthusiast for years: his early pictures date from the late 1880s, and he was perhaps among the very first in India to adopt the autochrome process of the Lumière brothers.

Umrao Sher-Gil was the father of the painter Amrita Sher-Gil (who died young in the 1940s) and the grandfather of the contemporary artist Vivan Sundaram. Both of these have a part to play in this exhibition, where Sundaram reworks his grandfather’s pictures by a form of computerised collage which is both a tender dip in the family archive and a more acerbic contemplation of the various parts taken by photography as catalyst or protagonist in personal identification.

The exhibition is full of links of this kind. A pleasing one is in the simple portrait by S.B. Syed from the 1850s of a woman hand-tinting a photograph. The presence of hand-tinting reminds us that the glorious tradition of miniature painting was not replaced by photography in India so much as teamed with it. Here, the meticulously detailed jewellery on the female sitter turns out to be the same as that worn by the artist who is seen painting it. Did the jewellery belong to the studio, to lend a certain social cachet to the fee-paying sitters? It seems likely. In Europe, gilding the photographic lily by hand-tinting fell (under modernist pressure) to the status of tastelessness. In India, not so.

To demonstrate that a separate photographic culture exists in India is the point of the show, and it does that well. It is to be hoped that it acts as an invitation to others to fill in the gaps, because this show, for all its vastness, is only a tentative beginning of a story that will continue to be told. It’s also a challenge to get full value from a show which achieves a great deal at the ultimate expense of depth