The sterile summer months are over and the art galleries of Delhi are humming again with life. Almost half a dozen exhibitions have been inaugurated, some major and the others more modest.

At Rabindra Bhavan, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations has sponsored an exhibition entitled “trajectories” that attempts to make one familiar with contemporary Spanish painting. Spain conjures up visions of conquistadors, bull-fights, that strange blend of Moorish and European influences and the magic of Andalusia. With the proximity to France, Spanish art has drawn considerably from its neighbour and contributed in no mean measure to the Paris School. Among the stalwarts of course is the irrepressible Picasso followed by Blanchard, Grus, Miro and a host of others.

Spanish art was characterised by a certain degree of austerity and ecclesiastical severity in both form and content-though the upheavals of modern art have long since blurred these distinctions. While the current exhibition does not pack any of the big guns, it does encompass as representative a selection as is possible in about two score exhibits. As the accompanying brochure states “among the nineteen artists whose work comprise this exhibition are surrealists of a new order such as Marco and Agullo, painters of the dramatic such as Mena and Barrey, interpreters of nature like Baviera and Pola and compositional rationalists as Mieres and Balart”.

In conceding the diversity of the show, are recalls what Gris had to say of Madrid “I remember that when I first went there as a tourist in 1908, it seemed to me like a town which had been asleep for fifty years” (!) However, a lot has happened in Spain in the last seven decades and the exhibits testify to the permeation that has occurred. Albert Agullo’s two exhibits “Hombre de Serie” and “Alienados” are symbolic of the transition and his surrealistic compositions are rather arresting. Against a haunting brown backdrop are silhouetted the hazy figures of the archetypal toilers of the world juxtaposed with an array of frightened machinery and faceless denizens of the machine age.

Amidst the Mondrian like abstracts of Waldo Balart and the luminosity of Pedro Guajards, one is struck by the desolation if Gonzalez-Pola’s compositions. Here is nature, bare and stark, twisted stumps of trees forlorn of their foliage wherein the artist has also introduced as eerie sense of movement that is intense and unsettling. Mention must also be made of Lorenzo Mena’s witty classicism and Antoni Miro’s versatility.

One is aware of the problems encountered in transporting pieces of art from one country to another, but the ICCR and the Spanish embassy might have included the odd Dali, Tapies, Millares, Saura or Rafael Canogar. And the organisers could also consider having all the titles of the exhibits translated into English. It is a little disconcerting when the guide is as ignorant of Spanish as the viewer.

At the Dhoomi Mal Gallery, Bartus Bartolomes, a young Venezuelan diplomat has 50 odd exhibits on display. A mixture of collages, drawings and sketches, the collection is both interesting and intriguing. Diplomat, painter, poet and philosopher, Bartolomes appears to have infused his work with diverse personality. Carefully crafted, it is not the technical virtuosity alone which catches one’s attention. There is an innate sense of irony and wry humour underlying most of the exhibits. The titles are a little long-possibly to tunnel the mind – and one was drawn towards “Honey fly eating gourmet child” and “Adam and Eve conspiring against the apples”.

Yet banter apart, the artist has captured the turbulence and fragmentation of our times, particularly in “Sleepless night of musical instruments”. With commendable economy, the whole ethos of the matador and the hapless bull has been invoked in “Corrida de Toros”. Some of the exhibits are debatable but they are unique.

By Bhaskar.
Financial Express.
New Dehli, India. September 5, 1982.