On the wings of a butterfly

Well-known printmaker Krishna Reddy’s art stems from an intimate knowledge of mechanics and materials and a love for Nature

September 19, 2014 06:54 pm | Updated 06:54 pm IST - Chennai

We sense the ambience filtering through Krishna Reddy’s prints that he also speaks of, growing up in a village community in Nadanoor

We sense the ambience filtering through Krishna Reddy’s prints that he also speaks of, growing up in a village community in Nadanoor

This year, Krishna Reddy is 89. Walking into the Lalit Kala Akademi gallery, there is a large portrait of Reddy with a mop of silver grey hair, joyfully hanging on to a large wheel. It is the wheel of a press. Across the corridor, a photograph shows the tools of a printer’s trade assembled on the wall of Reddy’s workshop. Two images and a hall of framed prints, in one instant convey, that to master an art requires rigorous mastery of the tools. An artist and his implements are not separate. Krishna Reddy drove his art with an intimate knowledge of mechanics and materials.

We sense the ambience filtering through Krishna Reddy’s prints that he also speaks of, growing up in a village community in Nadanoor, then Andhra: mornings quivering with fresh life, waters shimmering under moonlight and the evenings throbbing under the red sun. In the soft darkness, travelling troupes performed song and dance. The rhythm and repetition of these natural cycles are explicit in the structure of his intaglios. Krishna imbibed Nature and translated all of this with geometry, like women making kolams with dexterity, as if he was discovering the hidden lines of construction that make up each thing.  Every time his mother took him to the temple, the priest preached about God. On the other side, a man in the town where he attended school announced that there is no God. These two possibilities set off an early revolution in his mind leading to his questioning the existence of everything in Nature we oft take for granted. The conflicts would continue and become a movement in his mind, filling his works with its rapid flux of thought. A waterfall rushes out in a vortex of energy, a whirlpool is like a turtle’s shell exploding and a foamy wave springs out untethered. His explorations of the human figure are like multiple animations on one screen. Reddy’s baby girl Apu assumes many postures: crawling, gesturing and playing between a warp of sky and grid of land. “Art is like life, it is in a state of movement all the time — it is not static.”

A series of meetings and friendships with the greats have undeniably shaped Reddy’s artistry. Like the butterfly effect, one flutter causes another and then a wave rises unabated.  At 15, Reddy went to study at Vishva Bharati founded by Rabindranath Tagore. He made hundreds of posters for the Quit India Movement in 1942, getting arrested twice. Renowned artist Nandalal Bose, Master Moshai to his students, showed Reddy the importance of one’s own initiative. “When I graduated after seven years, they gave me a leaf.”

This simply symbolised his completing school. When the butterfly flapped its wings in Calcutta, Reddy moved to Madras where he became head of the Art Department at Kalakshetra. His association with J. Krishnamurti is evident in the philosophical nature of his inquiry that evolved with works as Violence and Sorrow. At Slade School, he met Henry Moore. Next, the currents swept him to Paris where he mingled with artists at ateliers and cafés. Reddy says, “It was the environment of Paris and the way the artists greeted you, with open arms — their zeal and enthusiasm was so inspiring.” Atelier 17, a workshop that emerged in the post-War period, was a hive for many artists. Reddy met Brancusi and worked under Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine. Then, he worked with Hayter, father of modern printmaking. Reddy once a sculptor, turned to printmaking in the 1950s. He felt gouging and digging into zinc-plate was still like sculpting. “I like to call myself a printmaker than a sculptor but sculpting is my love.” At Atelier 17, Reddy invented the marvellous art of viscosity printing, a technique that relies on the viscous nature of fluids to keep colours separate.

After several visits to the United States since 1964, Reddy settled in New York in 1976 where he started the Color Print Academy. In 1972, he received the Padma Shri and in 2007, the Lalit Kala Ratna Award. In 1984, he had workshops in Bombay, at the J.J. School of Arts. The students from J.J. School, with a special fund, today have brought Krishna Reddy’s travelling show to Chennai. “I learned this technique from Palaniappan sir of Lalit Kala Akdemi who is a master of this craft!” says Avinash Motghare showing me how an intaglio plate is etched with three different depths. Motghare shows me three rollers. “You put in low viscosity ink with the hard roller, the medium viscous ink with the medium and the highly viscous with the soft roller.” The oil-based inks of varying viscosity do not mix. With just one press, the print comes out. Krishna’s invention revolutionised colour printing by producing prints of multiple colours from a single intaglio plate.

We used to play a game as children where we folded a piece of paper in half pressing a piece of thread dipped in ink in-between. We pulled the string in arbitrary directions till all of it was out. Opening, we found two mirror images like a butterfly. Reddy’s work is reminiscent of two halves reflecting each other, yet pulling apart trying to be different. Rhyme Broken is like taalam interrupted. Krishna Reddy is really concerned with the asymmetry within the symmetry, the two sides that are not quite the same. And he concludes — it is neither competition nor ambition that drives human beings, it is happiness itself.

The show ends on Saturday.

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