Well-known for his unique technic and popular elephant paintings, Babu Xavier’s studio is nestled in the lap of Nature. Working in continuum, his paintings are international collectors’ pride. Senior art writer, SubhraMazumdar, in an interview with the master artist.
It was in the third year of graduate studies in Zoology, that artist Babu Xavier’s life stood at the cross roads. He was a good student and it was guaranteed that he would fare well in the examinations when he wrote them. Besides, he belonged to a family of government servants and most importantly, none of them had ever dreamt of pursuing Fine Art as a profession and which Babu Xavier was bent on doing. He left college to practice art with a group of senior and young artists in Kerala itself. This was the path he had taken up as an alternative to conventional art school practice to seek his fortune, in quite a ‘fairy tale fashion’.
At this point, or even further down the line, there was no unwavering commitment about making his name and fame as an artist that had egged him on, to take this drastic breakaway from a safe and secure path, in life. In his own self-confession, Xavier recalls, “As I look back I realise my passion made me hugely productive; trying various mediums and imageries.” Thus he had enrolled himself not in an art school at the outset but in his college library where during the first year, he soon transformed into a voracious reader. By the next year, he had turned his sights on the Arts section of the library, spending his time looking at drawings by masters and others. He also began to keep company with other artists and began making artworks in decorative patterns. Despite a plethora of art institutions in his native place, Babu Xavier was dead against the conventional art school practice and took a deliberate decision to opt for alternative methods of art education to hone his talent.
The art making output at this time was quite a mixed bag too, as Xavier continued to create pen and ink drawings of his own, and even indulged in a series of Batik collage works. There were also line drawings done on paper which kept money trickling into the coffers. He reached Kovalam in 1982 as caretaker of the gallery which was set up by a group of artists and was running in a government facility. This little-known idyllic spot by the sea had three beaches curving along its shores and drew holiday makers from abroad, on a regular basis. Coupled with a steady art output, the aspiring artist destined to make it big one day, was also obliged to manage his place of stay as manager-cum-resident sweeper for the next couple of years, while he stayed there.
By way of art making, Xavier had by now graduated from decorative works and drawings on paper to making small format water colours, on his managerial office table and soon enough, a sizeable stock of works was built up. Sales too, had burgeoned as the works found ready buyers among the town’s visitors, at Rs 20 only for each creation. “I couldn’t believe my own success with the small format works,’ he muses, “as I had no idea of the art scene and sales market at all.”
Having heard of Hussain, Shanti Dave and others of making name and fame with their art practice, Babu Xavier was quite inspired. This triggered an urge within him, to continue his pursuit, albeit with some misgivings, of course. “The imaginary lines in my art were very refreshing, but I had no clue about the art scene.” He was never chasing exposure but his potential did catapult him to the right places.
It was in 1985, when Dame Fortune had smiled in the most unexpected way. A young couple, employees of Grindlays Bank in Mumbai, who were honeymooning in the beach town, happened to visit his studio and liked his works so much that instead of just purchases in ones and twos they had selected a cache of works for the lordly sum of Rs 500. Back in Mumbai, the works had caught the attention of the famed Indian cartoonist late Mario Miranda, who asked the young Xavier to travel to Mumbai with a selection of his output. With a suitcase kitted with 300 small size works, Xavier knocked at the residence of the famed cartoonist in Mumbai, only to learn that his well-wisher was out of station. As a helpful aside, he was advised to while away his time, by visiting the galleries in and around Colaba, where he had arrived. Thus, had begun a tour-deforce of the geography of the Flora Fountain layout of Mumbai and his shy knocking at the entrance of Pundole Gallery, a landmark gallery in the vicinity.
“There was a lady from Kerala who was looking after the place”, recalls Xavier. He had thus taken the courage to broach the subject of his art output to her and offered to show her his creations. “There was something different that she saw, in these works I think,” he muses. “She informed me that the gallery owner Kali Pundole, had stepped out for a while and if I could return back to the gallery in a couple of hours.”
The return visit yielded nothing short of an unexpected miracle for the hesitant art seller. He was totally flummoxed when he heard the owner asking him: “Are you willing to sell the lot?” He was also requested to inform Mario Miranda in turn, about the proposed transaction. “Tell Mario that I am interested in the works,” Pundole reiterated. Of course, Xavier had no hesitation in accepting the generous offer, but what followed thereafter, completely floored him. He was offered a deal whereby Xavier was to work exclusively for the Pundole management. In turn, they would become his agents for art sales and would also give him an allowance for his living expenses. Right on the spot, the purse strings had been loosened and a generous amount of Rs 10,000 was in the hands of a somewhat dazed art maker. The deal had been topped with even more expediencies, such as the funding for buying quality art materials of his choice as well as an art space and accommodation at Chola Mandalam Art Village.
With his domestic front made smooth, Xavier dedicated himself to art making along professional lines. The earlier image of a struggling artist churning out works for the buyer’s market soon became a thing of the past. He was now able to approach his work in a free-spirited, yet discerning manner. While forms and other details underwent a change, what Xavier recalls of this period is him ‘feeling the pulse of the Bombay art scene’. His exhibitions, thanks to gallery sponsorship, reached a new high and Xavier was the darling of the art press, who lauded his art making, leaving him flummoxed to say the least. “People were making such fancy reports on me,” he chuckles. Even the art fraternity, including a senior artist from the Progressive Group, visited his exhibition in Mumbai, as also several members from the disciplines of music and writing.
Significantly, the emerging Babu Xavier on the art scene, was also the artist whom we would have no difficulty recognizing today. The motifs of animal figures, primarily elephant forms, were from this period. Also, a series of nudes and eroticism in A4 sizes became synonymous with his signature from those times. Exhibitions too, became a total sell out, but beneath this glamour and fizz, the core artist Babu Xavier continued to strive at improving and innovating in his chosen field. “My art was totally different from the trend of the times, with their flat background, water-based colours, animal motifs, altogether very rustic and with sharp lines,’ elucidates Xavier, as he sums up his style of art depiction.
And the spotlights had continued to shine on this newly emerging prodigy of the vibrant Mumbai art scene, when Babu Xavier was in the limelight once again, in a slightly off beat representation. While at his studio, a chance reference was given to him that “a lady from Chennai, Sara Abraham,” had come looking for him. She was none other than the promoter-founder of the Kala Yatra Art Movement, where she was hiring gallery spaces in cities and exhibiting promising artists, before seasoned and interested collectors. Although based in Chennai, she was a huge supporter of regional artists with talent, and Babu Xavier was one of them, together with Thota Tharani, Redappa Naidu, Jairam among several other luminaries.
It was her aim not just to promote art but to bring regional art practitioners on to a roving platform where it could be evaluated and appreciated and sold.
The face-to-face meeting was nothing short of a fantasy coming to fruition for our art maker. While Xavier was waiting at the bus stop to return to Kerala permanently after nearly a one-year stint in Cholamandal Artists Village, a car had screeched to a halt right before him, and there alighted Sara Abraham, offering him a sum of money, and after the preliminaries, she asked him to be in touch with her when he was back in Kerala. In fact, Sara Abraham offered all her support to promote young Xavier. Thereafter from 1986-89 Sara Abraham had supported and promoted him, not simply through sales and across platforms in India but even by introducing his art to the likes of Chester and Davida Hurwitz, the famed international collectors of contemporary Indian Art.
Although viewership and subsequent sales had remained buoyant after the Sara deal had been closed, the lure of Kerala’s beaches, and the pull of his homeland made him take the unconventional step of abandoning the fertile art atmosphere of Mumbai and rent a small facility in the beach town of Kovalam, to simply paint and paint. Though he had planned a life of comparative isolation, to immerse himself in his work and have no truck with sales or press coverage or art-related fanfare, his whereabouts were no longer sub rosa, as he had wished. Alas! how futile was this aspiration, for at the doorstep of his humble lodgings, Chester Herewitz had found his way and took back a large bundle of works, and leaving behind a stack of cash, together with gifts for the family!
Besides Herewitz, Xavier was also being befriended by fellow Indian masters, who too, gave him unstinted and valuable guidance. It was their observations that guided him to conform to small format works, as they had proclaimed that he had mastered that genre. Others coaxed him to leave Kovalam and make a trip to the capital to hob knob with the hoi poloi of Indian Art, as also build an acquaintance with the capital’s well-heeled art promoters as also eminent artists residing there. But his habit of remaining faceless had become his trademark and when he set foot at Gallery Ganesha in New Delhi, a gallery that had been successfully promoting him, the face-to-face meeting was something of a landmark, since its owner and our art maker had never met in person prior to that occasion. It was also a period when Xavier had ventured into doing independent works on large canvases and on non-figurative themes, signalling a point of release for him, personally. And when the studio space had proved restrictive for his art making in such gargantuan sizes, it was the restaurant walls of Mumbai’s hospitality industry that had offered him their outlets for his artworks. Today, the master continues to paint and progress unfettered and committed, believing that for the rest of his life, the yardsticks of his paintings would be measured in terms of, “expression, colour and style, for the rest of my life.” Then, as if letting one into a special secret, he adds, “In every series I paint, I always hold back two-three works as keepsakes, so that I have a continuum of artworks in my collection. The colours I pick for my paintings are always my own and not chosen from any other point of view. Finally, I must say, I never try another painting in the same format.”
Perhaps, one is drawn to conclude that the above principles that the artist has imbibed, such as his manner of cataloguing his art journey, his personalized palette and form selection, his redoubling of efforts in the face of negative comments, are but a derivation from his unique surroundings. Nestled as they lie, surrounded by beaches, where Nature works in a continuum, colouring the sandy shores in tinges of its own, this inspirational location remains unflustered by any negative comments and continues to glamorise its beachy showmanship with a dogged determination.
