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The Collection of Abhishek and Radhika PoddarI don't know why I collect. But I enjoy doing it. Often, I look at a piece and feel that if I don’t have it, there would be something missing in my life. - Abhishek Poddar Over the last three decades, Abhishek and Radhika Poddar have built one of India’s most comprehensive collections of modern and contemporary art, antiquities, folk and tribal art and textiles. Aesthetes with a taste for the finest across genres and categories, their collecting is based on an innate respect for the arts and a drive to learn, document and share India’s diverse cultural landscape. The collection reflects their longstanding personal relationships with artists, gallerists and scholars, as well as their deep knowledge and connoisseurship, which has evolved over years of seeing and collecting. Patrons with a vision that preceded the market, Abhishek and Radhika have built an enviable collection of modern and contemporary Indian art. Aside from running the family business, the couple currently run Tasveer, a gallery dedicated to photography, and are building the Museum of Art and Photography in Bangalore which aims to represent the diverse art forms originating from the Indian subcontinent. In keeping with the family’s interest in promoting Indian visual arts and design, Radhika also owns and manages the lifestyle store Cinnamon, housed in a nineteenth century Chettiar bungalow in Bangalore that the couple painstakingly restored to its original glory. The Formative YearsBorn and raised in Calcutta, Abhishek was introduced to collecting and living with art at a young age. His father, Bimal Poddar began collecting by acquiring some paintings and works of art in the early 1960s and Abhishek recalls the Raj-period landscapes, classical stone sculptures, silver, textiles, porcelain and modern Indian paintings that he grew up with. Art was an integral part of his early life and Abhishek drew inspiration as a young collector not only through these objects but also through the visits of venerable family friends like the photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck and collectors including the Neotias, Kejriwals and Birlas. Seeing the early interest and passion for art in his son, Bimal Poddar gave him a modest annual budget for art, and thus began a journey of art collecting for Abhishek as a teenager in the mid-1980s. In 1980, Abhishek left home for The Doon School, the legendary boarding school for boys in the Himalayan foothills of Dehradun. At Doon, he launched the first publication on art called Akshat. Akshat was released at the school’s 1985 Founders’ Day celebrations by Rajiv Gandhi, a ‘Dosco’ or Doon School alumnus who had just been elected Prime Minister of India. The journal enabled Abhishek to communicate with artists directly leading to many lifelong friendships. As a young collector, Abhishek recalls the exhibitions that had the most long-standing impact in what would lay the foundation of the collection he has built. These include the seminal 1986 show Visions at CIMA gallery in Calcutta, which featured paintings and sculptures by Somnath Hore, Ganesh Pyne, Bikash Bhattacharjee and Jogen Chowdhury. Another defining series of exhibitions for Abhishek, which extended his interest to genres beyond modern art, was Vishwakarma, organised by Pupul Jayakar and Martand ‘Mapu’ Singh in the early 1980s to showcase and revive India’s wealth of weaving and textile traditions. Shows of folk and tribal art at the National Crafts Museum in Delhi, like Other Masters curated by Dr. Jyotindra Jain, also hold a special place in the collector’s memory. In fact, it is Martand Singh and Dr. Jain who Abhishek credits for opening his eyes to folk and tribal art, textiles, craft and popular culture as collector’s items, which form a large part the Poddar’s collection today. Pritish Nandy’s regular column in the Illustrated Weekly of India also played a noteworthy role in opening the teenager’s eyes to artists like Manjit Bawa, Maqbool Fida Husain and Ram Kumar. With an unquenchable thirst and curiosity to learn more, Abhishek started to visit these artists in their studios, acquiring some of the greatest pieces that form the core of the Poddar Collection. Friendships and PatronageThe most important of the relationships Abhishek forged was the one with the painter Manjit Bawa, who played a pivotal role in his and Radhika’s journey in the art world. In 1987, Abhishek arrived on the doorstep of Bawa’s studio in Delhi’s Garhi complex after reading about him in Nandy’s column, much to the artist’s surprise. This visit culminated into a lifelong friendship that lasted until the artist’s untimely death in 2008. Abhishek credits the time he spent with Bawa for cultivating his eye for art, and as a result, refining his growing collection. “If there is one person who has played a pivotal role in my discovery of art, it is the late Manjit Bawa [...] He was a big influence and mentor. I would call him an elder brother, my guru and confidante. He held my hand and shaped my understanding of art. My most cherished moments in art are those when I have made a deep connection with an artist.” (V.P. Anand, ‘Putting Together the Pieces’, India Today Spice, January 2015, p. 49)Other artists whom Abhishek met and befriended, and who played an influential role in the evolution of his collection were Ram Kumar, Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, Maqbool Fida Husain, Tyeb Mehta, Meera Mukherjee, Arpita and Paramjit Singh, Bhupen Khakhar and Jogen Chowdhury. Abhishek’s long friendship with Husain began by chance encounter when, at the age of fourteen when he spotted him on the road outside his Calcutta home. Recognising his bearded countenance and bare feet from photographs he had seen in the Weekly, the teenager invited him home for tea. Since then, the artist regularly stayed with the Poddars in Calcutta, arriving and departing unannounced, and remained in touch with Abhishek till a few days before his death in 2011. In 1988-89, when Abhishek briefly lived and worked in Bombay, he would spend each weekday evening either with Kekoo Gandhy at Gallery Chemould next door to his office, or at the homes of Jehangir Sabavala and Akbar Padamsee. On the weekends, he would venture to the suburb of Bandra to spend time with the artists N.S. Bendre, K.K. Hebbar and Prabhakar Barwe. Through their exchanges about art and their own practices, Abhishek became more aware of what to look for in a work of art. From Gandhy, who would introduce him as ‘India’s youngest collector’, he acquired his first paintings by Tyeb Mehta and Vasudeo S. Gaitonde among many others.It was during these early years that the Poddar family renovated their home in Coonoor, a quaint town in the Nilgiri hills of Tamil Nadu, which would come to have an important place in the story of Abhishek and Radhika’s collection. Coonoor became the location of several artist’s retreats that Abhishek, Radhika and Manjit Bawa planned together. Although the artists they invited were not compelled to paint at these ‘camps’, they often created collaborative paintings as mementos of the time they spent there together. Today, the Coonoor house still has several walls painted by artists including Bawa as memorials to these convivial gatherings.As many collectors do, Abhishek has bittersweet memories of the works that got away from him. Rather than regrets, he calls these ‘missed opportunities’, including an Amrita Sher-Gil canvas that remained just a little over the amount he could muster the conviction to get his father to spend, and Bhupen Khakhar’s large painting Guru Jayanti, which mysteriously went missing after he purchased it and wasn’t able to bring it back from London immediately because of its size. There were also the rare plates painted by Jamini Roy that were washed beyond recognition with the rest of the family’s crockery when they moved to Bangalore, and a massive installation by Vivan Sundaram, for which he built a wall in his house, which eventually went to another collector.Beyond CollectingIn 1992, at the age of twenty-three, Abhishek curated his first exhibition, the inaugural show at Sakshi Gallery Mumbai titled The Subjective Eye. In her foreword to the catalogue, gallerist and friend Geetha Mehra noted that he was “a young collector with a surprising mature commitment to excellence in art. He has been keenly watching contemporary art in India and has been collecting since he was fourteen, with the active support of his family.” (The Subjective Eye, exhibition catalogue, Mumbai, 1992) Featuring works by Arpita Singh, Jayashree Chakravarty, Jogen Chowdhury, Manjit Bawa and Ram Kumar, the exhibition was not based on a particular school or style, but on artists who had played an influential role in Abhishek’s life, “especially with regard to giving [him] a deeper understanding and exposure to art.” (The Subjective Eye, exhibition catalogue, Mumbai, 1992) In 1999, he collaborated with Mehra once again, curating the exhibition Humour on line, featuring works by Amit Ambalal, Arpita Singh, Atul Dodiya and Bhupen Khakhar.Abhishek and Radhika also pushed artists to explore and experiment with other media through commissions, including designs for textiles, carpets and dhurries, jewellery, screens, etched mirrors, silver and crockery. In 1994-95, Abhishek helped put together a show of jewellery and silver boxes conceived by Manjit Bawa at Gallery Espace in Delhi, and also a show of carpets designed by S.H. Raza, V.S. Gaitonde, Manjit Bawa, Arpita Singh, Jogen Chowdhury and Laxma Goud for Sakshi Gallery in Mumbai and Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi. Several artists also created pieces especially for Radhika, first as wedding gifts and then as tokens of their friendship. Apart from drawings and paintings, Meera Mukherjee hand-embroidered a kantha dupatta for her with an intricate village scene, and Jogen Chowdhury, Jagdish Swaminathan and Arpita Singh designed saris for her. Radhika also turned one of the tapestries Abhishek commissioned Raza to design into wearable art, adding black silk to turn it into a striking sari border.The Poddars continue to commission their artist friends to create unique pieces for the family, including the famous ‘bouquet’ of twenty-five flower paintings, each by a different artist, as a gift for Abhishek’s parents on their silver anniversary. Other commissions include a series of nine paintings of the goddess Durga by women artists, which ended up including one by Manjit Bawa (cheekily signed Manjit Kaur) when one of the selected artists pulled out, and a series of twelve watercolours by Arpita Singh based on the zodiac.Apart from passing on the joy of collecting to their children, who have grown up surrounded by art and have had the privilege of calling artists like Manjit Bawa family, the Poddars hope to keep sharing, through public endeavours like Tasveer and Cinnamon, and the future museum, the breadth and diversity of art within India. PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF ABHISHEK AND RADHIKA PODDAR
BHUPEN KHAKHAR (1934-2003)
Untitled (Portrait of a Man)
Details
BHUPEN KHAKHAR (1934-2003)
Untitled (Portrait of a Man)
signed in Gujarati (centre left)
watercolour on paper
17 7/8 x 16 1/8 in. (45.4 x 41 cm.)
Executed circa late 1970s-early 1980s
Untitled (Portrait of a Man)
signed in Gujarati (centre left)
watercolour on paper
17 7/8 x 16 1/8 in. (45.4 x 41 cm.)
Executed circa late 1970s-early 1980s
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist
Brought to you by
Umah Jacob