Breaking barriers on canvas: These exhibitions in Mumbai highlight Prafulla Dahanukar's contribution to art

The Moon mural by Dahanukar is an example of her work with ceramics

Prafulla would certainly have a smile if she saw the murals and street art all across Mumbai today," shares Savita Apte. The art historian and founder-director, Art Dubai, is in the city as part of the retrospective titled Prafulla: A Retrospective, on the Indian modernist, Prafulla Dahanukar that opens at the Jehangir Art Gallery this week. Like many, Apte attributes Dahanukar for her eventual choice to write and research art. These twin personas of the artist and patron shape the retrospective curated by Dr Beth Citron.

Prafulla Dahanukar. Pics Courtesy/PDAF

Put together by the family, the retrospective will be mirrored by Prerna, an exhibition by 41 fellowship-awardees of the Prafulla Dahanukar Art Foundation (PDAF), which celebrates a decade of its own journey. "It is important to understand that she was also a patron of the arts, and went beyond her role as an artist. As important as it is to celebrate her as an artist, we thought it is also important to celebrate her role in sustaining a new generation of artists," shares daughter Gopika Dahanukar.

A peer of artists like B Prabha and Nasreen Mohammedi, Dahanukar's rise post her graduation from Sir JJ School of Art defined her. Citron, curator of Modern and Contemporary Asian and Asian Diaspora Art at the Asia Society Museum in New York, notes, "While Prafulla's name and, to an extent, her canvases are well known, most audiences are not aware of the breadth of her practice across mediums as well as her key role in the development of modernist abstraction in India."

Apte adds, "I would say Prafulla [Dahanukar] came to abstraction quite early in her career. She had received a scholarship from Stanley William Hayter's art studio, Atelier 17, in the Paris of early 1960s. It allowed her to witness the abstract creations of post-World War II Paris, and also offered her the opportunity to produce prints that resolved abstraction in her own mind."

Dr Beth Citron and Savita Apte

The retrospective will delve into the very ‘Indian philosophy of abstraction' that she defined, but also expand into her vast range. Citron points out, "Prafulla [Dahanukar] set herself apart in experimenting with various mediums from the beginning of her career. This included an important series of prints made at Atelier 17 in Paris in 1961, and more sustainedly her work in ceramic and other mediums for murals and public art installations in Mumbai and beyond."

The murals, for instance, are an example of pioneering work. Starting with the famed mural on the side of the Shiv Sagar Estate built by IM Kadri in Worli, Dahanukar went on to create many more in Mumbai, as well as in the Middle East. "As far as we are able to discern, she was one of the first women to have been granted large mural projects. There were muralists before her, but they were all men as far as we can tell," Apte shares.

The art historian has been searching through the archives for images of these murals for her upcoming book on the artist and her journey, created in collaboration with the family, to release next year. She will also join Gopika and Citron in a panel talk presented by Asia Society India, Ecologies of Abstraction, to explore Dahanukar's groundbreaking contributions. The artist's daughter Gauri Mehta adds, "Her love for experimenting with materials and ceramics in public art murals gradually matured into more introspective and abstract expressions."

For Citron though, the diversity of the retrospective adds to its value. "There are so many jewels in the exhibition, but in terms of emotional intensity I would draw your attention to the early watercolours that were part of her 1961-62 sketchbook - these give an incredible sense of her hand as she worked through the possibilities of abstraction at that moment."

Like the person herself, there are multiple facets to her art that make Prafulla Dahanukar interesting for art lovers, historians and students today.

FROM December 10,
6 pm (preview); December 11 to December 16,
11 am to 7 pm AT Jehangir Art Gallery, Kala Ghoda, Fort.