Thaindian News

New Delhi, March 5 (IANS) Contemporary spiritual artist Sohan Qadri stood apart from the rest of his generation of painters for his devotion to his cause - pursuing the divine through art and poetry. His demise Wednesday marks the end of a chapter in the merging of spirituality and art.

Qadri, a proponent of the ‘dot or the moola beeja’ in contemporary tantrik art, passed away after a prolonged kidney aliment at the age of 78 in Canada, leaving behind one of the most eclectic bodies of spiritual art and poetry inspired by Buddhism and Sufism.

His art interpreted ancient tantrik philosophy of meditation, renunciation and freedom, and commune with the almighty into colours on papers.

Qadri, a versatile poet, liked to describe himself as a “tantrik, whose profession was painting”.

“I am living a tantrik way of life and my profession is painting. One has to live the tantrik way, then, and only then, reflections of the tantrik tenets will appear in paintings,” Qadri had told IANS in an interview in 2008.

His lifestyle - a “routine of colours, yoga, religion, poetry and freedom” - prompted him to give up his oil-based heavy textured works with which he started his career for the intensely luminous dye-infested works on serrated paper which became his signature for their textile-like surface.

Qadri’s art assimilated from his travels around the world.

He went in search of spiritual salvation to Tibet where he studied Vajrayana Buddhism. Africa painted his spirituality in myriad shades of rites and rituals and Europe inspired him with its classical and neo-classical arts movements.

Qadri eventually found a home in Denmark where he lived for nearly three decades. He founded the free city of Christianna outside the Danish capital Copenhagen.

Failing health compelled him to relocate to Canada a few years ago.

Born in 1932 to a wealthy family at Chachoki in Punjab, from a young age he was drawn to the mystical, influenced by two spiritualists who lived on the family farm.

“I grew up in a small village in Punjab and was initiated into meditation and yoga by my guru Bhikham Giri. I had a spiritual bent of mind as a child which tempted me to go to guru Giri and a Sufi saint, Ahmad Ali Khan in the vicinity of my village,” Qadri said.

The artist followed it with a long tenure of meditation in the Himalayas. He then fled to Tibet but then returned to train under a photographer in Jalandhar. He joined the Progressive Group of artists in Mumbai in the 1950s.

In 1961, Mulk Raj Anand, the founder-editor of art magazine, Marg, and an associate of Bloomsbury, spotted Qadri’s talent and became his first major patron. Anand visited Punjab with Peirre Jearnneret, the cousin of Le Corbusier, who bought one of Qadri paintings for his collection.

It was during this time that the artist changed his name to Sohan Qadri from Sohan Singh as a homage to his Sufi teachers.

In 1964, he founded the Loose Group of painters in India and set up the La Fourmiere two years later in Zurich

“The most abiding influence of the imagery in my art are the textures of the mud walls and ploughed fields in the early morning mist of Punjab. The resonance of the ‘prabhat pheris (early morning rounds)’ by fakirs, sadhus and the mendicants, their chants - crept into my work,” he said.

However, the spirit of liberation that lifted his art above the confines of conventional techniques, movements and genres, could be attributed to the impact of Buddhism.

Says noted art critic Kishor Singh, head of exhibitions and publications at the Delhi Art Gallery: “We have more than 300 art works by Qadri and we are still collecting them to ensure that its representation is complete across all periods.”

The Delhi Art Gallery has been collecting Qadri’s works for the last five years.

“Till recently, Qadri has been ignored in the country of his birth despite the acknowledgement he enjoyed in the west, particularly in Europe where his paintings were part of important museum collections,” Singh said.

(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)