A Painter with Abstract Sensibility - Vidya Sagar Upadhyay by Prof. Dilleep Singh Chauhan

Born in 1948 at Partapur, (Rajasthan) and educated (M.A., Ph.D. in Painting) at Udaipur, Vidya Sagar Upadhyay taught for several years at Rajasthan School of Arts, Jaipur. Teaching in fine art institute, gave him a strong background in fine arts and academic discipline. In the early period of his career he had executed a series of pencil drawings - an abstract thought, and then exhibited a series of masterful black and white abstract canvases painted in acrylic. He received several state awards and all India awards, including National Lalit Kala Akademi award in 1981. He exhibited extensively his works in India and also in abroad. He had several one-man shows of his pencil drawings, watercolors, dry pastels, canvases and prints. While exhibiting in Delhi, Bombay, he entered the orbit of contemporary Indian leaders in art, and his association with Takhman 28, caused him to make bold efforts in maturing himself in very early years of his career. In addition to paintings, Vidya Sagar made a number of graphic prints-black and white etchings, colour intaglios and lithographs. They……too show a tranquil absorption in the wonder of creativity. He materializes his richest graphic skills, which, by involving every conceivable etching technique, reached that sumptuous painterly quality, to which he always aspired.

Vidya Sagar always carries his picture world with him. He needs to have his works around him. Even on a short visit, he always takes his works, at least pastel drawings with him. It makes him feel at home wherever he goes and therefore continuity remains in his thought. He always works, may be a small drawing on a piece of paper.

For many years, he worked, choosing only black color and its various tones to create a brilliant and glittering animated impression, contrasting shapes in black masses against deepest white space. For the viewer a realm lies there of harmonies to follow, and enjoy in exploring forms in his abstract compositions. It seems that these are drawings with black colors and paintings with clouds, illuminating the mist and enumerating a forest or a desert. As time passes, his canvases became larger and darker and brush strokes became freer and spontaneous. In monochromatic treatment, these free forms look like, sometimes, clouds-smoke-mist and sand dunes. These are naturally evolving forms in nature which continuous deform - change slowly and then diffuse in space. Being similar, however, his treatment of images intended, no where, to be realistic. During next few years, he continued to utilize these forms in expressing his personal fantasy. Despite his rapid assimilation of abstract forms, the essence of Vidya Sagar’s art is a vision of simplicity.

Although his works were in monochrome, there is no doubt that he was more sensitive to volume. But, what then was the role of color in his works? After working, for about twenty years, only in black. He then attributed a very precise role to color. Just as he freed the form, he allowed color to become alive, and then in later works, he allowed color to exist independently. Color was no longer merely indicated but it became a property of the composition or a fluid carried by light and capable of metamorphosis. Its newly acquired independence enables it to play an active role in/exposition of his art. However, working on a large scale has continued to fascinate him and to inspire some of his most striking paintings.

His colors, lit by the strange legendary radiance of Rajasthani folk lore, seem to sing. The effect was quite different from that of his earlier use of color-black and white, which he had already perfected for an expressive and balanced composition. Because of his early association with tribal art in Mewar, he must surely had been influenced by its colour theory, and in its radiantly coloured lattice, his free forms moved into further dimension. They are now restricted or cut by some oblique lines, broken lines, angular forms, and then again become freer. He attempted to represent simultaneously the various aspects of a composition. His abstract forms were repeated with a slight variation. Every piece of canvas or paper is a complete painting in itself, but all of them are framed in one. He also made a discovery series of paintings, a concept of representing a frame within a frame. Many small and large framed canvases were reframed into one frame. Thus all the categories out of which the painting was built and which until then had all tended toward the interpretation of space, surface, light, rhythm, form and composition were radically converted in the direction of pictorial independence.

But Vidya Sagar’s work was by no means limited to reforming or restructuring aesthetic factors, however, significant these may have been. He dreamt of a living art in which the viewer could even participate. For this he made use of a flexible but compact installation a vision partially inspired by traditional Kavad. Kavad reading in Rajasthan, particularly in Mewar region is a traditional way of telling mythological stories, such as Ramayana, Mahabhatara, etc. through pictures. Kavad is a kind of cup-board whose doors are multi hinged containing many facets. All these doors are painted in folk style, scenes of some mythological story in bright pure colors, and are opened up one after another.

His next task, therefore, in developing the new pictorial language was to propose new syntax with fresh imagery and previously inexpressible emotions, from the sphere of unseen and the irrational. When we go to the exhibition gallery, what are we actually looking for? We can see a beautiful painting elsewhere too. In fact, we expect from the gallery something different, a different presentation of works may be even dramatic sometimes. This motivated Vidya Sagar to come up with a sort of installation of his expressions in the form of Kavad. The paintings on the multi-facets of Kavad can be seen one by one or they can be opened up simultaneously at a time. There are several ways of arranging these works. They have many combinations of their inclinations. However, they are not a kind of kinetic art but surely in Kavad, his creations are flexible and have movements. In these mobile forms, a continually evolving plastic totality was created out of the white, black, ochre, red and blue harmonies. Artist wanted to bring about a decorative fusion of the settings and his creations. It is a kind of visual stammering, in which the projected image diverted from its function of conveying meaning, to its concrete existence. Kavad of Vidya Sagar is a piece of anti-traditional, as it is not a story telling method, but it is above all a hymn to modern life freed of all conventions. From sculpture like constructions-Kavadas, the evidence would seem to be that Vidya Sagar is moving in to a fresh period in his developments, a ‘late style’ comparable in originality of idea with the works of his earlier phase, but now leaves viewers a little mystified, unable entirely to understand, but nonetheless deeply impressed. Kavad is a synthesis of abstract scenic compositions and this abstract assembly reflects the pictorial development of the painter.

Finally, we think of Vidya Sagar as one of the leading abstract Rajasthani painter of India. He shares this distinction, only with Suresh Sharma in Rajasthan, and to name a few other Indian painters such as Gyatonde, Ram Kumar, Jeram Patel, Ambadas and Vishva Nathan, who are consistently working in the international style for more than thirty years.