As India struggled for independence from the British Raj and later redefined itself after independence, Bhabesh Sanyal and the Mayo School of Arts, Lahore, were doing their part in forming what could be called a parallel art movement.
B.C. Sanyal, whom many of his students and friends called the father of Indian modern art, was visited by students and friends associated with the Mayo School of Arts long after he left Lahore in 1947. He came to Lahore at the age of twenty-seven, in 1929, to make a sculpture portrait of the nationalist leader Lala Lajpat Rai. This was the period when the nationalist movement was gathering force and the British Raj was facing opposition on many fronts. Sanyal, who was from Assam, remained in Lahore in search of an artistic career. He soon joined the Mayo School of Art, teaching carving and engraving, and painting in oil and watercolour. He was right at the centre of Lahore's cultural milieu. Sanyal's presence was inspiring, and young artists under his supervision soon learned more than the routine syllabi, or the colonial art institutions, had to offer. His ideas and concepts soon ran contrary to the colonial vision of the Mayo School and its authorities, given his radical approach. He had to leave the Mayo School once it became difficult to continue working there. Before long, though, Sanyal had a studio of his own, where the young and talented gathered to exchange ideas. This became well known, and everyone called it the Lahore Studio of Fine Arts.
During the tumultuous years of partition and independence, Bhabesh Sanyal came to Delhi and made his home near Humayun's Tomb, close to the Nizamuddin Basti. Many were inspired to join him there, including some of his Lahore friends who came to live close by, which in turn influenced others. Here he slowly but surely built a growing sensibility of modernity into artistic practice in Delhi. Like his Nizamuddin house, and later the Gole Market studio, his studio in Lahore had been a gathering place where the current issues of art and its practice, and political philosophies and ideologies, were discussed and argued — all in an intellectually vibrant and artistic milieu that was never exclusive, its warmth all-inclusive. Amrita Sher-Gil, of Indian and Hungarian parentage, trained in the modernist visual language and closely involved with the modern art movement as it was happening in the art centres of Europe, was a frequent visitor to Sanyal's studio. Like many young and passionate artists of his time, Sanyal was greatly impressed by her. She had moved to Lahore after her marriage to her Hungarian cousin Victor and had a studio there where she worked.
When Bhabesh Sanyal joined the Mayo School of Art, he was quickly the most admired teacher, especially among the younger generation. He nurtured their talent and encouraged them gently, teaching and leading by example. Satish Gujral and Krishen Khanna were two of his students from the Mayo School days. In Delhi, as in Lahore, Sanyal was actively building a movement that took Indian art to a depth and level that attracted public attention and gained coverage in the country's slowly growing media. He worked for some years at the All India Fine Arts Society, and taught at the Delhi Polytechnic, which later became the Delhi College of Art. He went on to become chairman of the newly formed Lalit Kala Akademi. Krishen Khanna, one of Sanyal's students and one of the modernists who continued to work in the language developed at the Mayo School, found in Bhabesh Sanyal's presence and encouragement new possibilities for looking at things and expressing them in a visual language informed by new developments, both artistic and intellectual. A strong need was nurtured to be honest in one's expression, and to break new ground in saying what was contemporary and socially relevant.
Satish Gujral's art is difficult to enclose in any neat category such as modernist. His apprenticeship with the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera encouraged him to take up a scale and themes that were large and socially engaged. He later developed a language in architectural design; his murals and large canvases bear the mark of his early training at Mayo.
Bhabesh Sanyal, seen in this context of political legacies and structuring, in many senses never suffered from obvious nostalgia or sentiment. In his work and words, he appears always connected to all aspects of his life: his growing up in Assam, his refugee life near the Nizamuddin Basti, and his fascination with the dark crows that long remained his signature. He had an immense capacity, and perhaps here lay his gift, to see life for what it was, to read meanings in their larger context, to seek and grow as a human, and to keep bonds even when they were not part of the mainstream political agenda of the Indian subcontinent.
- Vinayak Pasricha.