India's superstar printmakers

In a universe overwhelmed by a handful of names that tower over the entire Indian art market, it's a pity that some highly deserving and successful artists remain in the knowledge domain of only a limited few. That leaves the art afficionados that much poorer.

This week, let us divert our attention from the mighty masters of modern Indian art and focus on two names that lie at the zenith of printmaking in India yet languish on the sidelines of art celebdom. These are Krishna Reddy and Zarina Hashmi; the latter came to be popularly known as Zarina only as later in life, she had dropped her patronymic.

Why Krishna Reddy and Zarina? As both their birth anniversaries fall this week, it's a great occasion to remember them and their contribution to the evolution of modern Indian art, which is no less than that of any other artist who might be more celebrated by the market.

Reddy was born on 15 July 1925 while Zarina was born on 16 July 1937. Even though both passed on to their eternal journeys in 2018 and 2020 respectively, their oeuvres remain important landmarks in modern Indian art's journey, which took the genre of printmaking to its apogee.

Prints, Their Popularity and Market

Both Reddy and Zarina were essentially printmakers and share a common thread of having traversed a similar, international journey. In fact, they both remain on the periphery of the popular glory of Indian art precisely because of the genre they practiced — printmaking, which historically has been a junior cousin of painting in terms of popularity, and consequently, in market value too. That's a pity as this attitude then deprives the larger public of enjoying some superlative works of art.

To borrow a simple explanation of this genre of art from different sources on the Internet, including the Metropolitan Museum of New York, printmaking is a process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. This artistic process is based on the principle of transferring images from a matrix onto another surface. Traditional printmaking techniques include woodcut, etching, engraving, and lithography, while modern artists have expanded the scope to screenprinting as well.

Artists throughout history have practiced it, either as part of their larger artistic repertoire of genres or exclusively. Rembrandt, the 17th century Dutch great, for instance, practiced printmaking as did later, universally recognised names such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Edvard Munch, to name some. However, the most famous print ever in history is 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa', a woodblock print made in 1831 by the 'ukiyo-e' Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai featuring a massive wave rising up and filling up the picture plane, dwarfing the Mount Fuji in the background, even as three boats bob wildly in the folds of the great wave. It's easily recognised due to its multifarious reproductions globally in popular media and on objects such as bags, books, etc.

Even though prints are not as hot commodity as paintings, they are gaining popularity because they are not as exorbitantly priced as paintings. For starters, it's easier to own a top signature in a print than in an acrylic or oil painting. Moreover, for rare works of art and by those artists whose works are no longer available on the market, a print becomes the only way to own a famous signature. No wonder then, top auction houses such as Christie's and Sotheby's have multiple dedicated auctions for prints in their annual calendars, even though Indian auction market often clubs prints with top-notch paintings in a common sale.

Knowing Krishna Reddy and Zarina

Krishna Reddy was born in Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh; his father was a farmer who also painted temple murals. He studied at Rishi Valley School founded by the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. Next, he went to Santiniketan and studied briefly under Nandalal Bose and Ramkinkar Baij, and then spent some time at Kalakshetra, Madras, before moving to Europe. After a stint in London studying sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, he went to Paris to study at Atelier 17, the famous print studio of S. W. Hayter, in the early 1950s, that would change the course of his life. It was at Atelier 17 that Reddy pioneered the simultaneous colour printing technique along with Hayter, an innovation that he is best remembered for. He went on to teach at Atelier 17 and also became its co-director. In 1976, he joined the New York University as professor and director of the graphics and printmaking department.

Though Reddy eventually made New York his home, he maintained close contact with his homeland throughout his life. His work also evoked the atmospherics of the land he grew up in; in fact, the influence for the organic imagery of his abstracts is often attributed to his study of botany at Santiniketan.

One of his most expensive works ever sold at an auction is an edition of his print, 'Child Descending: Sun Worshippers', that fetched $7,500 (approx. Rs 5.97 lakh at current rate) at a Christie's auction in September 2018. Interestingly, his watercolour on handmade paper work, 'Untitled (Group of Trees)' fetched Rs 10.62 lakh at a Sotheby's auction in Mumbai in November 2018, titled 'Boundless: India'.

Zarina too, like Reddy, would eventually make New York her home. But in a life marked by constant shifting of homes, she made a career exploring the concept of home, boundaries and homelessness, through her minimalist prints. Born in Aligarh to a professor of history, Zarina was a mathematics graduate from the Aligarh Muslim University. Marriage to an Indian foreign service officer launched her on a peripatetic life, which would inform her work as strongly as the Partition of the country that impacted her personally because her family migrated to Pakistan a few years after the division of the subcontinent.

It was at a Paris posting of her husband that she joined Atelier 17 to learn printmaking, which would change the course of her life, in a case strikingly similar to Reddy's. Zarina next learnt woodblock printing at the Toshi Yoshido Studio in Tokyo. However, her husband passed away in 1977 when posted in New York; Zarina decided to stay on and made the city her home for the rest of her life.

Questions of home, identity, memory, maps and borders figured prominently in her works, which also earned her renown all over the world. An edition of her woodblock print work, 'Home is a Foreign Place', each comprising a set of 36 prints and executed in 1999, fetched Rs 1.10 crore at the Christie's Mumbai auction in December 2014, titled 'The India Sale.' 'Fleeting Moments', a work in 22-karat gold leaf on Indian handmade paper, fetched Rs 37.50 lakh at Sotheby's 'Boundless India' auction in Mumbai in November 2018. Her Maplewood in gold installation, 'Tasbih (Gold)' fetched $365,400 (approx. Rs 2.9 crore) at a Sotheby's auction in New York.

Modern printmaking in India would have been so lacklustre but for Krishna Reddy and Zarina.

(The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist, editor and arts consultant. She blogs at www.archanakhareghose.com)