A two-city exhibition in Europe sets off the brooding genius of Ganesh Haloi with his series of abstracts. By Unnati Joshi

Ganesh Haloi’s simple gouache on paper works express layers of this timeless struggle.  The process of creation too is a struggle to compose the space, colour, form and narration. But for Haloi it has always been colour and its space, trying to create a dialogue for each tone that he lays on the surface, giving it its own individuality and constructing layers of different tonalities and textures over it.

It is important here to quote a passage from the artist’s diary where he identifies each colour with his own life’s experience — a symbolic representation of his practice.

“Black is my faith,

Blue is the wideness,

Green is the field,

Red is my seed,

White is the wildness,

Yellow is the sunshine,

I am composite of these colours,

Which ultimately leads me to an unknown destiny...”

Can you talk a little about your formative years as an artistIJ

I was born in Jamalpur, Mymensingh, now in Bangladesh, in 1936, and moved to Kolkata after the Partition in 1950. I graduated from the Government College of Art and Craft in Kolkata in 1956 and joined the Archaeological Survey of India  the next year to make copies of the Ajanta murals. My body of work during my formative years in college, 1951-56 has a stream of consciousness quality. I tried to carry the outside world indoors as I painted from multiple memories. Memory has always proven crucial to me and enables me to function during periods of anxiety, torment and pensiveness. My readings and childhood found a way into my works too. In the mid-50s, my work echoed the sentiments of writers and poets at the time in Kolkata, notably Jibanananda Das, Tarashankar and Manik Bandopadhyay. Moreover, I was interested in exploring the art of the past, Ajanta, Persian, Indian miniatures, early Bengal oil paintings and the neo-Bengal school, Buddhist philosophy, the history of early India and the affinities it might share with my contemporaries. Today I find that I was able to carry on a sort of running dialogue with many sources of inspiration.

If you can share an experience of yours during the partitionIJ

 like many of my generation, I too suffered the anguish of being uprooted from my place of birth. My elder brother took the decision that we had to move to Kolkata and we lived in refugee camps. Being a displaced person is the biggest tragedy.

When was that moment when you believed you would be an artist for lifeIJ

 From a very young age. My house in Jamalpur was on the banks of the mighty river Brahmaputra and all around me was water and marshy land. I used to hear sounds like dub dub, sun sun and wonder where these sounds were coming from. Perhaps that’s how I was drawn to abstraction. In school, when I was in 6th standard, I had a drawing teacher Gafoor Miyan. He would make one of us recite a Tagore poem and one to draw on the blackboard out of imagination while the poem was being recited. So writing, drawing, sketching has been part of me since my childhood.

 If you weren’t an artist, what profession would you have pursuedIJ

 I don’t know. I would have got lost perhaps.

Who and what inspires your work and styleIJ From where do you find the inspirationIJ

 From memories of my childhood — of marshy lands, green fields, water bodies. And then, after seven years at Ajanta, I came back to Kolkata in 1963 to join the art college as a lecturer. It was a time of self introspection. The urge was to create a new language, a new way of seeing, expressing a visual landscape. What inspired me was the cut edged rock face in Ajanta valley amidst the ranges of Sahayadri that is both autumnal and silent. The geometric forms of the Sahayadri hills ultimately seeped into my work. Then, a chance visit to an exhibition of British sculptors taking place in the city in 1967, gave me some visual clues. The works of Kenneth Armitage, Robert Adams, Bernard Meadows, all young sculptors delighted me. Their use of the jagged surface had a stream of consciousness in them that made me prepared for my all important encounter with my language and quickened my memory to the landscapes of my mind.

Since there are various artists creating abstract form of art, what makes one piece stand out from the otherIJ

 For me abstraction becomes a figure of speech that opens the unconscious mind and allows the truth to emerge and to re-establish a lost contact with the primordial past.

There are thousands of accomplished artists. What does it take to develop your particular if not unique niche in that worldIJ

 Being true to oneself.

 How would you describe your philosophy and mission as an artistIJ

 Art is an act of pursuance to reach the ultimate, but not the ultimate itself.

 Share how you conceptualised and then went about creating  gouache on board and on paper.

 When I was in college, once on Buddha Jayanti, I happened to go to Bodh Gaya and there it came to me that I should go to Ajanta. When I came back to college, there was a notice which said ‘four artists are needed to make reproductions of Ajanta murals’. Andar se jo chaaho zaroor milta hai. So when I went to Ajanta, the painters (Nizami) were mostly making watercolours and I was drawn to this medium. But you can’t get the depth that I wanted in simple watercolours so I started mixing white with watercolors. That led me to gouache, which is opaque and earthy, just like our soil. Just like miniatures, creating gouache is a very personal process, you have to sit on the floor, or at a table, so the art comes right into your personal space. I have always loved working with Nepali paper.

 What makes abstract art different from any other art formIJ

 Abstraction is not as simple as the mere application of brushwork, texture or colours. It is created through a rigorous mental debate that reflects multiple experiences. Abstract work plays with the viewer’s imagination. We make the world beautiful with abstraction.

let’s take Composition and Composition III. Talk to us about your inspirations here and what you hope people see in studying the pieces.

 My sculptures have the same story as my paintings. These have been made in bronze, and people are free to interpret what they like, just as they would do for my paintings

 Sculptor and painter. Are the passions equalIJ

 Yes!

What do you hope is your legacy as an artistIJ

 What remains forever is what touches your heart. There have been many artists but few are remembered for eternity. I hope to have touched some hearts.

 What is your expectation from this exhibitIJ

 It is a global platform, and I feel previleged that curator Natasha Ginwala and Adam Szymczyk (the chief Curator of Documenta) have chosen my work for this edition.

Advice for artists trying to get establishedIJ

 Jab kalsi bhar jaati hai aur jab usmein se paani girne lagta hai, usko art kehte hain, kum se kuch nahin hota… zyada se hota hai.. that is why struggle is important and so is hard work.

Akar Prakar represents veteran abstractionist Ganesh Haloi’s new works in a two-city exhibition in Europe till September, 2017