Inderjeet Grover embarked on a journey to colour authentic India, says Mansi Bhansali
It’s not easy to transform a photograph into a life like painting especially since in this world of abstract art, realism has been lost. Inderjeet Grover travelled from one city to another, around the country and captured the hard-core reality of the lives of unsung heroes, in his recent exhibition Journey with my shadow. The exhibition was recently displayed at the Shridharani Art Gallery.
“I can’t say that I’m a born artist. I got interested in drawing when I was in class 10th, thanks to my friends. At that time, I found it attractive and interesting. I started making my own school diagrams as well as those of my friends. I became obsessed and started drawing whether I was in the park or at the bus stand. Then I opted for College of Arts and organised various exhibitions, workshops and artists camps. Besides painting, I also played music and was a part of the theatre societies,” says Grover on his journey as an artist.
There was a reason that he decided to work with this theme “Each of my exhibitions is titled journey, either its Journey for my passion or Journey of my shadow. The term journey is a constant. For an artist journey is at every step, it will be there till your last breath. Through this journey, we learn and experience new things. I realised my work is my shadow and my soulmate,” he says.
Grover works as a deputy director in the education department in New Delhi Municipal Corporation says, “I’ve received the best response from the Mumbai and Pune audience.” Bangalore and Shimla are other places where he has taken his exhibition.
Grover looks for inspiration everywhere. “Any good work by any artist inspires me, especially works of Rajesh Mehra, Prof Vijay Mohan and Neeraj Goswami from Delhi. Amrita Shergill is my favourite. My work looks like impressionism and I like the impressionists — Manet, Monet and Degas.”
Every painting shows a glimpse of a place — whether it is Banaras, Rajasthan or Delhi. Grover successfully interprets the sanctity of these places with his spatula. He sticks to realism. “I have a passion for portraits. In today’s world of art, realistic art is not considered creative. So, I entered into semi-realism. In today’s generation, those who don’t know anything about realistic arts, start from abstract. You can identify it from their strokes. But for me realistic art, a sense of perspective, knowledge, figures, lines and proportions are very important, even in abstract paintings,” he says.
Among the series in the exhibition, Grover’s favourite is the cycle and door one. All the paintings showcase the day-to-day life of people and their struggles, gently and humbly.
He feels that the need of the hour in the field of art, is patronage. “People who have nothing to do with art, run galleries. They exploit artists. It’s really difficult for those artists who can’t afford to showcase their work. Thus, India intensively needs patronage,” he says. He is emphatic that whenever he commissions a work of art to aspiring students, his first target is to pay them immediately whether he gets money from the clients or not. “An honest and sincere encouragement for the young artist is very urgent,” says he.
Grover wants that his work should spread happiness, influence and interest people. For him that would be his real earning.
In art, like in other fields, technology does have a role to play. He says, “Technology is directly influencing hand work. Nowadays, people are depending on photoshop. It took us four-five days to decide our layout but now it’s been done in an hour. What exists now is brain-storming — but only for computers.”
Grover provides a word for aspiring artists, “Believe in yourself. Explore and cherish the challenges which you face because it will only make you perfect”. His exhibition travels to Gufa Art Gallery, Ahmedabad from July 25th - 30th.