Experimenting with the arts

Ask Pervez Chavda, son of late Shiavax Chavda, about the earliest memories he has of his artist father, and he says, “I remember my father would religiously go to his studio every day where he was lost in his own creative world and couldn’t be disturbed for hours on end. He was meticulous about his portrait work and would often make me pose for the initial sketch of male portraits.”

The artist, who experimented with various forms and styles over his four decade long career, has his work displayed in many museums, including Victoria & Albert Museum London, Budapest Museum, The National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi and other private and public collections in India and abroad. Now after 22 years, his family is holding a dedicated retrospective of his works at the Jehangir Art Gallery, titled The Dancing Line – revisiting Shiavax Chavda.

Ranjit Hoskote, art critic, poet and curator, believes that it is Chavda’s range and ability to experiment with a whole variety of different things that makes him stand apart. “The ability to not confine yourself to any narrow way of looking at art or the world, is what I find amazing about this artist,” says Hoskote, who had co-curated and showcased some of Chavda’s works in a 2013 exhibition titled No Parsi is an Island. Not only did Chavda experiment with various mediums such as paper, canvas, silk, plywood, Chinese ink, crayon, water colour, tempera and oils, he also redefined his style of painting over the years.

“What’s also interesting is his close link to the other arts. His wife Khurshid Vajifdar and her two sisters were classical dancers, and that link came across in his drawings. Those were exceptional works,” he adds. Talking about this strong association with the arts, his son recalls, “He was very fond of Indian classical music and there was a time when he had to decide between being a singer or pursuing a career in art. He would often attend performances by Hindustani classical musicians and dancers and would sit with his sketchbook and a torch capturing their various movements and gestures. These sketches later formed the base for his oil on canvas paintings.” The purpose of this retrospective, says Pervez, is to showcase paintings and sketches from his vast body of work to the new generation of art lovers and revive his memory. “Over his long career, he experimented with a wide range of art forms — from figuratives to abstracts and semi-abstracts, watercolours, oils and tempera - which we thought certainly deserved to be exhibited. It’s an attempt to showcase the versatility of the artist,” he says.

The Dancing Line – revisiting Shiavax Chavda’, at Jehangir Art Gallery, from October 24-30.