If behind every successful man there is a woman, in Uttam Nepali’s case, it was not one but many of them. Nepali owes his success to all those girls who studied art with him at the Lucknow University of Arts in India.
“In fact, I tried flirting with a few there,” the veteran artist, whom Professor Abhi Subedi claims to be next to Lain Singh Bangdel in the chronological mode of modern Nepali painting, says. “When none reciprocated, I realized I HAD to be an artist.”
The 72-year-”young” artist grew up in Lucknow, where his grandfather moved in during the early Forties as an exile. His grandfather Krishna Prasad Karmacharya worked in the palace of Agni Shumsher, the place where Shankar Hotel now stands at Lazimpat in Kathmandu. But later, there was a conflict between his grandfather and the palace; so the family left Nepal for good.
In Lucknow, the family had Kasturi business, which Nepali’s father took over later. It was his father’s wish that Nepali follow the ancestral vocation. But although Nepali didn’t know what he was to be, he knew it wasn’t business.
“I didn’t want to read, I didn’t want to write, I didn’t want to be a businessman. Basically, I just didn’t want to do anything.” There was nothing on the earth he wanted to; so, after passing his high school, he spent his days in plain wilderness, until one fine day he met a friend who was studying art.
“Art?” Nepali barked at him, when he first mentioned it. “Can you even study art?”
His friend affirmed and added how girls and boys studied together where he went.
Even as a toddler, Nepali loved drawing more than writing. And when he later took to his sketchbooks, he felt this ecstasy which he later discovered was called “spiritual pleasure.”
Those who know Nepali also know of his fondness for the word spiritual. Explaining this, he says, “Basically, I’m a spiritual artist. Oh! Okay, now I would also need to explain the word spiritual.”
According to him, spirituality is an art of “expressing the unexpressed forms.”
“Let me illustrate this with an example,” he begins on what was to be a half-an-hour-long sermon. “If we look at the Harappan utensils, excavated recently in Pakistan, we find that those saucers are totally different from what we use today. So these forms of saucers were unexpressed at that time.”
Accordingly, the job of a true artist is to discover those unexpressed forms, and they’ll evolve and express themselves. This is one among many reasons why he chose the abstract medium.
“Abstract lets you break away from patterns,” he speaks as he bangs his fists in the air. Pushing back the gold rimmed glasses that slipped down his nose during the punch, he continues, “In realistic mediums, you only conform to what already IS. To me, the job of an artist is more than just reinforcing the realities “he must discover some.”
Nepali is best known for his abstract works, which may seem nothing more than incoherent patches to new eyes. The artist, who estimates to have painted over 3,000 canvases, has held 26 solo exhibitions to this day. Interestingly, ever since his first exhibition in 1959, spirituality has been his major theme.
“I admire Hinduism for its profound flexibility and liberty,” Nepali says.
“So are you Hindu by faith?”
He frowns and looks pensively at the ceiling of his living room, which he recently coated in the resemblance of his painting. And as if communicating with walls, he smiles at them.
“I guess I’m Hindu by birth.”
For Nepali, the concept of thirty-three hundred thousand of deities in Hinduism is another excuse to “discover new deities.” “If there are as many deities, they are an awesome lot, who are still to be discovered,” he beams. Even if there is one of each he discovered in his paintings, they still make three thousand only.
Although Nepali usually meditates on spiritual themes, at times he also loves working on human nature. These days, he spends much time in his three-room studio at his house in Bansbari, painting on the theme of individuality.
“For me, individuality is the ultimate prayer,” he says. “Worship is just a technique; if you become who you are, you simply become a prayer.”
When it comes to individuality, it is not just something Nepali preaches but lives up to it. For instance, after he returned from America last year, he wanted to have an ear-top. Immediately, he had his ear pierced and got one diamond top for himself. Of course, many people objected, including his wife.
But he had his own mind. “After all, I should do what I would want to do, no?”
When Nepali married Mandira Karmacharya in 1954, he was still studying art in Lucknow. In the beginning, he was worried she might not be able to put herself in his shoes. “But besides these silly remarks on tops, I still do what I want to do, thanks to my wife.”
The couple celebrated their 50th anniversary last July.
Usually, Nepali is quiet about politics. But the government’s latest “invasion” into Nepal Academy has “surprised” him.
“The previous governments did very little to promote art. And this is also one reason that has prevented them from doing any harm to art, much less devaluating it. But it’s funny how they inducted their jungle comrades into art. What next, then?”
His question reverberated and gradually melted into the walls of his living room, which he recently painted in the resemblance of his abstract patches, the one thing that recurs in his every painting.
(All photos by Bikash Karki.)
bhushita@myrepublica.com
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