Immerse into the world of surreal paintings at Mumbai’s Jehangir Art Gallery

The art journey that began in June 1990 at the auditorium hall of Jehangir Art Gallery has come full circle today Titled Prabhu Joshi The Final Exhibition the weeklong painting spectacle begins today at Gallery 3 of the Jehangir Art Gallery The exhibition is a retrospective showcasing the surreal imagination of the Late Prabhu JoshiThe sublime paintings lie at the intersection of spaces devoid of human presence Imagine silent squares abandoned alleys a house decaying into ruin with a ladder leaning against a wall and mountains gradually bubbling into cold blue darkness These paintings have developed through an internal discipline inspired by a delayed rhythm of lifeCurated by his son Punarvasu the only thing missing from the exhibition is the artist himself Through this act Punarvasu pays tribute to his father who passed away in 2021 during the second wave of the Covid19 pandemic In a conversation with Middaycom he tells us that these works depict the finesse of his technical skills handling of the medium and compositionsA selftaught artist Joshi worked for All India Radio as a Transmission Executive and later joined Doordarshan The signs of his artistic creativity began reflecting in his childhood days When he was a kid he was asked to paint lsquoSanjabairsquo a celebratory drawing ritual conducted at the folk festival of the Malwa region Madhya PradeshAt this festival unmarried girls paint the lives of Shiva and Parvati on a wall as a form of worship to get blessed with a groom like Shiva Joshi would get recruited by his elder sister and her friends to draw the couple He would happily take up the gig in exchange for raw mangoes and tamarindHis tryst with painting began with oil colours Later he advanced to water colours where he perfected his art vision and style over a period of time This enabled him to upskill the minimal use of the brush and align it with the natural flow of coloursPunarvasu informs us that ldquoAcrylics were the next set of colours he chose based on the desire to replicate what he did in water colour Acrylics also afforded him the freedom to paint on a larger scale Some of his landscapes are 3ft X 4ftrdquo Within the realm of this medium he also painted lsquoStill Lifersquo in an homage to old Dutch master painters in his later years The desire to create continued in his school days when his friends would pay him to make diagrams in their lab notebooks Advancing to his work life he would juggle his passion with his profession Punarvasu recalls his father returning home in the evenings and painting his way straight into the heart of the nightA house in ruins by Prabhu JoshiJoshi painted in Indore and the surrounding regions of Malwa in Madhya Pradesh His style intended to depict the colours that told their own story without the touch or direction of an artist ldquoHis usage of the brush was minimalistic It was the flow of water colours that painted the picture This was his signature painting stylerdquo reveals PunarvasuHis inspiration to paint places devoid of human presence came from a personal phase of transition Migrating to Indore from his ancestral village left a deep impact on his psyche and created a void that could not be filled ever Later he began to reproduce the void on canvas and through short stories that he wrote in Hindi His paintings depict a yearning a desire to belong to a place not knownBirds by Prabhu JoshiHis paintings also became a medium to represent environmental issues that mar the urban landscapes In his later works with acrylic paints he predominantly focuses on birds and how the sprawling cities are slowly devouring the natural habitats of birds ldquoFor example in Indore it is difficult to spot any sparrows now Back in the day these birds cohabitated with humans making their nest in our homes Additionally paintings of deserted streets and dilapidated buildings are an effort to draw attention to the ruralurban migrationrdquo shares his sonWhat is Punarvasus vision to promulgate his fathers paintings He shares that he will continue to exhibit his paintings in different cities More so in metropolitan cities to highlight the trials and tribulations faced by people who are forced to leave their villages and come to metropolitan cities His fatherrsquos writings and paintings work in tandem to highlight this messageHe intends to have his fathers short stories translated into the English language The idea behind doing so is to take the deeper nuances of migration to a wider audience ldquoThe pain and agony which he felt when he migrated from his village to Dewas and later to Indore was his creative fuel and again and again he harkened back to the simple village life both in his writings and his paintingsrdquoAlso Read Attend the second art carnival by The Bombay Art Society in Bandra