Satish Gujral, an artist for all seasons

The lives of few artists have been as entwined with so many of the most significant events and people of their times as that of Satish Gujral.

The artist, one of the most prolific, multi-faceted and significant of his generation, who turned 90 this Christmas – the occasion for a major upcoming show at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in Delhi – was an early acquaintance of the influential Progressive Artists' Group. "I went to Bombay (now Mumbai) to study at the JJ School of Arts (from 1944-47), and the likes of FN Souza, SH Raza, VS Gaitonde and SH Bakre – who now occupy the centrestage of modern Indian art, were either with me in the same class or my senior by a few years," says the artist.

Later, when he went to Mexico on an art scholarship, apprenticed with David Alfredo Siqueiros and Diego Rivera, two artists who led that country's muralist movement, and befriended Frida Kahlo.

But it's not just in the field of art that Gujral's life has been at the crossroads of history. There was his painful experience of Partition when he spent three months escorting refugees, especially women, across the border, trying to save them from marauding rioters on both sides. In his autobiography, A Brush With Life, Gujral says he and his brother (IK Gujral who went on to become prime minister) managed to save 300 women from certain death.

The horrors of what he then saw have been the subject of several canvases he painted in the 1950s and 1960s – dark images of men and women painted in muscular, fluid lines. "Gujral is one of the very few Indian artists who depicted the Partition," says Pramod KG, who has curated the show.

But what's little known is Gujral's association with Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi.

Though Gujral's father, a freedom fighter and member of the Constituent Assembly from Rawalpindi, knew Nehru, the artist first came to the prime minister's notice when a painting of Lala Lajpat Rai that he'd been commissioned for Parliament was rejected. Despite the rejection, the painting was put up for public viewing at Modern School, Barakhamba Road, for a day and Charles Fabri, the leading art critic of the day, wrote a glowing review of it on the front page of The Statesman.

"Nehru read it and asked for the painting to be brought to Teen Murti. So my brother and I took the painting to him. He looked at it and said you have depicted Lalaji as a lion, but he was no lion. I replied that my task was to justify his greatness. You see, Nehru and Lajpat Rai were not the greatest of friends," says Gujral, clearly a great raconteur despite the ravages of age and recent ill-health, and somewhat slurred speech – the result of his hearing impairment.

Needless to say, Nehru dismissed the committee and ordered the painting to be put in the Central Hall of Parliament, where it still stands. "A blow-up of the portrait will be part of the show," says Pramod.

Nehru was also responsible, an episode documented in Gujral's autobiography and in Marie Seton's book on Nehru, for the artist's marriage. He persuaded Kiran's father to let her marry the hearing-impaired artist, (he didn't succeed and the couple got married without her father's approval) getting an apartment allotted to the newly-weds, even attending their reception with his cabinet in tow. "Nehru tried to help me in many ways. When I went abroad, he wrote to diplomats in the country I visited asking them to look for doctors for me," he says.

Gujral was also only one of two artists, the other being Jacob Epstein, that Nehru ever sat for – that painting too can be seen at IGNCA, along with 70 others done over the years. For, despite his limited mobility, Gujral continues to work. "It is what keeps me alive," he says pointing to a sculpture he completed just two days ago [see pic].