Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Both Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Shiva were great feminists. While the Mahatma brought women into the National Movement, for Lord Shiva, Parwati was not just his wife but a companion and an equal partner, says a former civil servant and a filmmaker, abstract artist and poet, Sangeeta Gupta
Sangeeta’s solo exhibition of textile paintings ‘Adiyogi Shiv: A Journey in Cosmic Indigo’ based on various forms of Lord Shiva - at Bharat Bhavan drew a warm response from the art lovers in the city.
An artwork of artist Sangeeta Gupta at Bharat Bhavan |
The 66-year-old Sangeeta Gupta joined the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) in 1984 and retired as the Chief Commissioner of Income Tax. In March 2020, she created the world's longest textile painting with natural indigo colour extracted from the plant and made a claim for mention in Limca Book of records. The artwork was made to create an awareness for sustainable living, using natural colours and dyes .It measures 169.15 sq m (1,82078 sq ft) and is painted on Khaddar fabric. She began the artwork on February 25, 2020 and completed it on March 4 202 at the Shilpi Sansthan, Rataliya village , Jaipur Rajasthan.
She says that she was interested in painting since her childhood and continued to pursue her passion even during her days as a civil servant. “I sacrificed watching Saas-Bahu serials and devoted at least two hours every day to art,” she says.
Art lovers seeing works of artist Sangeeta Gupta in a solo exhibition ‘Adiyogi Shiv:A Journey in Cosmic Indigo’ at Bharat Bhavan in the city. |
Her artistic journey, so far, has spanned 35 solo exhibitions of paintings and the one at Bharat Bhavan is the 37th. She has made 88 paintings on 200 meters of Khadi cloth. Of these, 29 paintings were displayed in the six-day exhibition which concluded on Sunday.
Her solo shows have been held in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Patna, Gandhinagar, Vadodara Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pondicherry, Auroville, Lucknow and Chandigarh in India and at London, Berlin, Munich, Lahore, Belfast, Thessaloniki (Greece), Mississauga (Toronto) Canada, Krakow and Rzeszow in Poland. “ This is my first exhibition in Madhya Pradesh,” she says.
Sangeeta says that the canvas she has used for her works exhibited at Bharat Bhavan is made of handspun and handwoven Khadi and all the paintings have been made using only one colour - indigo. “Why indigo?” Sangeeta says that it is because the indigo, for her, symbolises the Champaran Movement - Mahatma Gandhi’s first mass protest against the exploitation of farm workers by British indigo farmers. “The use of Khadi and indigo both symbolise my philosophy and my humble attempt to revive Indian culture. Khadi is not only a fabric but a symbol of our Swadeshi movement,” she said.
Sangeeta has to her credit 35 published books, which includes sixteen anthologies of her poems in Hindi and seven in English. Notably, 11 of her books have been translated into various languages, including German, Greek, Mandarin, Hungarian,English, Bangla, Dogri, Tamil, and Urdu. She has also translated a book of poems by Hungarian Poet Istvan Turzi into Hindi.
She says that the British had destroyed Indian art by slotting many indigenous art forms as ‘crafts’. “When you make a basket from bamboo, is it not art? But thanks to the British, we call it a craft,” she says. She believes that art should not remain confined to galleries and intellectuals. It should reach the masses, she said.
