Umesh Varma (1935-2019): An Artist Who Had Lost the Survival Kit

(Umesh Varma )

Umesh Varma is no more. He was eighty four years old. This is how a generic obituary starts. Many by now have started wondering about this name- Umesh Varma. In Delhi he was a well-known name and an unavoidable presence. Perhaps the present crops of artists may not know who he was and even if they knew, I do not think they would care much for Varma was not the kind of artist that they would love to remember fondly or feel proud of the artistic legacy that he has left behind. Irrespective of the schools people would remember artists mostly when they have made it in the market. V.S.Gaitonde had been lamented for his life deprived of materialistic flourish but posthumously he is hailed for the moolah that his works rake in the auction market. However the lament has not yet been dead and gone; it is still on for some feel that artist has not been paid his due. Dead do not want money. May be the kith and kin of the dead need it. Gaitonde left a legacy that Varma perhaps was not able to make. There would be people now working towards recognizing the dead artist but as the folk tales go, what’s the use of money for a dead man? Artist or no artist, dead man is a living memory in a few hearts that don’t need a recharge.

(work by Umesh Varma)

Varma was a modernist and like all modernists he had a mad streak in his life and works. He worked along with Jagdish Dey, Manjit Bawa and all other doyens like Satish Gujral, Krishen Khanna, M.F.Husain and name any artist who have crossed their eighties now, dead or alive. When someone is dead we think of his life and when he is alive the art market wonders why the artist is not dead and gone. Death assures limited edition works for the market to play with. But that is possible only in the case of the artists who have made it in the market. Varma was not a market force and his death was not an ‘event’ in the social media. I came to know about him when Aura Art Limited sent me a whatsapp obit message. I was not shocked for I knew Varma was ailing and away from the art scene for the last few years. When an artist is removed from his active life none bothers to even pay a visit. Irritated or in absolute lack of remembrance an artist spends his old age alone waiting for death. This was what happened to Shantanu Lodh, our friend. He couldn’t even show his irritation for he was in coma.

(work by Umesh Varma)

Born in Uttar Pradesh, Varma was expected to become a doctor as he was good at science and his father had willed him to be one. Varma must have had that crazy element in him even when he was in the medical school for he found the first and second year students calling each other ‘doctor’ ridiculous and decided to leave the ambition to become a medic half way. He bid good bye to the medical college and moved to Delhi with his elder brother who was a writer and editor. In Delhi he joined the Delhi Polytechnic and pursued painting as his primary subject. By the time he finished his studies he was a well-known artist and organizer in Delhi. With the artists like Jagdish Dey, Manjit Bawa, Nilmonee Chatterjee and so on he formed a group called ‘The Six’ and exhibited at the famous AIFACS Art Gallery quite regularly.

(work by Umesh Varma)

A scholarship took him to Japan and his mission was to study folk pottery than folk painting. He spent a couple of years there and during his education he had a mental break down allegedly caused by his mother’s demise. As per one of the rare interviews available on net in Japan, upon hearing the news of his mother’s death, Varma took his passport to the Indian Consulate and got her name added into it. May be in those days the Consulates were very obliging. Sooner than later he found himself in an asylum and once partly cured he was sent back to India where he got further treatment in the Safdarjung Hospital. He had confessed in the interview that he was married off by Manjit Bawa in 1968. He took to painting seriously and worked at the Lalit Kala Academy’s Garhi Studios for many years.

(work by Umesh Varma)

Varma oscillated between abstraction and modernist figuration. He was not quite an abstract artist for he never wanted to be away from people and their pangs. Having seen the life in Delhi which was at the throes of making itself politically and socially with culture handled by the ones closer to power, Varma stood closer to the people whose struggles often came into his paintings as the dominant subject. There was also a phase where Varma went into a scientific mode of painting, seeking the secrets of the universe. He was eccentric to the core while his market savvy contemporaries feigned madness that brought them fame and riches. Varma did not throw off his shoes and also did not make appearances in the right places at the right time as the very savvy Husain used to do. Instead Varma believed in his eccentricity and critiqued both verbally and artistically the artists of his times. He thought they were close to him for they all had very open mind. But he was into a great illusion; for the ones who were his contemporaries Varma was turning a bit of spoilsport, if not a nuisance.

(work by Umesh Varma)

I met Varma in mid 1990s and I never became close to him for I had crossed the Vangogh phase in my life and I never thought an old man could be Vangogh, desperate, frustrated, irritated, fuming and bickering. Still I observed this man from a distance who was quite a sample of an artist from the pages of history books. I too had the opportunity to listen to him talking from the aisles of seminar halls or at the dining area of the same. He emphatically made his points but there were no takers. He spoke eloquently and elegantly but the critique was not entertained at the seminar halls. He was a bit like Suneet Chopra who still has a huge back up of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and himself is a farmers’ leader. Chopra spoke in superlatives and deviated from his point often until a distracted audience waned off. But he still got the mike to speak. Varma spoke in emphatic tone and never deviated from his point and still the audience got distracted and they soon waned off and Varma was denied mike most often. Class war is different in complexion when it comes to the seminar halls and in the art scene.

(work by Umesh Varma)

When I met him, Varma was energetic. I saw him ageing; the first symptom was him carrying a walking stick and the next symptom was a cap. He could put his walking stick away and attend a well furbished buffet. Then he slowly faded off. Only his friends who had been with him at the Garhi Studios spoke about him. Death brings out the best memories therefore today people must be talking good about him in Delhi. If someone speaks ill of the dead person it shows two things; one the speaker is really bad or the speaker is really hurt by the dead one. As the poet had put it, ‘death makes kinship stronger, whatever may be when alive’ (Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan-Chakkala), Varma’s death also should give out the same response. I write this obituary because of two reasons; senior artist A.Ramachandran often said one thing to me: “Writers, especially art critics spend their sunset years in oblivion and in poverty because our art scene is ruthless.” I had made it a point then and there that I shouldn’t be like that. Before I could gather my thoughts I also felt that it was not just the art critics who die in oblivion but some artists too. If the writings of an art critic could give him a second lease of life posthumously the same is given to an artist by the auction houses. The second reason was the sight of Umesh Varma. Despite his intelligence I could see people moving away from him as his talk was frozen in time. He couldn’t update his ideas or renew his thought process. He stood and spoke the same frozen theme about life and art from the rock strong self-belief. I thought one shouldn’t be like that. Updating, renewal and withdrawal are necessary survival package for a writer or anybody who is a creative person. Many do not learn this lesson till their last day of life. They seek recognition; they do not know the art of withdrawing. Umesh Varma, I wistfully think, could have learnt this before he was confined to bed a few years back.