First published on 11th February 2025
Devraj Dakoji is a name that commands admiration and respect in the illustrious history of printmaking, both in India and internationally. Hosted by Exhibit 320, New Delhi, with curatorial advisor Amit Jain, Signed, Lower Right: Devraj Dakoji follows the artist’s journey over five decades, highlighting key works from his prolific practice and contextualizing his evocative visual language. While Dakoji has also worked on painting and drawing, the exhibition focuses on his print editions. The title refers to the signing convention associated with the rulebook, that framed standards of academic and artistic printmaking for the longest time. The show is a timely compilation that brings forth the powerful visual storytelling and boundless aspects of experimentation that form part of the artist’s legacy.
Dakoji’s Training and Influences
Dakoji’s training in printmaking began in 1959 at the Government College of Fine Arts and Architecture in Hyderabad, and in 1966, he went on to join the Faculty of Fine Arts at M.S. University, Baroda. Under the tutelage of powerful thinkers such as Jyoti Bhatt, N.B. Joglekar and K.G. Subramanyan, Dakoji developed his image-making alongside meaning-making through art, working with the mediums of colour lithography, woodcut and etching, in the presence of senior artists such as Gulammohammed Sheikh and Bhupen Khakkar. In the mid-1970s, he enrolled at the Chelsea School of Arts through a British Council scholarship for his postgraduate studies. Later, he went to the Tamarind Institute in New Mexico in the early 1990s, where his innovations were noticed by fellow printmaker Krishna Reddy. Reddy introduced Dakoji to Robert Blackburn and his printmaking workshop in 1993, where he learnt ‘collaborative printmaking,’ and would forge some important creative associations. Through the community printshop, Dakoji collaborated with painters and sculptors such as M.F. Husain, Zarina Hashmi, Chakaia Booker, Juan Sanchez and Lenore R.S. Lim. Artists from across Asia and the Americas also studied and worked with Dakoji, experimenting with lithography, etching and serigraphy, as seen in their collaborative prints across various museums and collections. In 1996, Dakoji returned to India and set up Atelier 2221 in Shahpur Jat, New Delhi, with his artist wife, Pratibha. Serving as the only independent edition-making studio in India at the time, it drew many artists, including V.S. Gaitonde, Himmat Shah, Manu and Madhvi Parekh, and Yusuf Arakkal to work on prints.
Seeking Inspiration in Pranamu and Print
In the course of this fascinating career, Dakoji’s repertoire has come to be structured around a deep understanding of numerous printmaking techniques, including lithography, etching, mezzotint, [1] dry-point, silk screen, viscosity, chine collé, [2] photo transfers and combinations of these. The retrospective offers viewers glimpses of his command over all these processes.
A few early colour lithographs and screenprints signify a freedom of spirit and inclination towards intuitive, truthful expressions that was to become a signature of the artist. Another thread connecting many of Dakoji’s works is his interest in subjects from nature. He possibly inherited this strong connection with the natural world through his upbringing in a family of Ayurvedic practitioners. While plant and animal life find a remarkable presence in the artist’s imagination, he appears to deliberately leave out human figuration.
Prints dating to the period between the mid-1970s to early 1980s reveal Dakoji’s preoccupation with rocks and boulders. During his time at the Chelsea School of Art, he encountered the power of the Stonehenge monuments, which also brought back memories of the boulder-filled landscape around his home in Hyderabad. The “Stone” series from the show serve as a good example of Dakoji’s studies of rocks and rock formations within natural or surreal topographies. Shankar Tripathi also discusses in the accompanying text how “Dakoji’s monoliths aren’t merely geological features, but oracles, historians, time-keepers.”
Dakoji’s ability to play with a combination of weight and buoyancy, and produce a quintessential departure from conventional formats of composition is noteworthy, as is his treatment of the print matrix with layering of texture. His enjoyment of the process is particularly visible in his mezzotints of this period, in which the expressiveness of his language, his mastery over line and form, and the alchemy of generating tonalities and soft layers on the surfaces, come together to induce timeless visual experiences.
By the later 1980s and the 1990s, his works come to be driven by his interest in the cyclical patterns of evolution, birth and death, and feature strange creatures emerging and disappearing in subtle layers across the picture planes. This period also saw his aesthetic vision shaped by the idea of “Pranamu” (a term taken from Dakoji’s native language, Telugu) or “Prana” (from Sanskrit), meaning the moving force of nature. One of the texts in this section recounts an occasion when the artist suddenly felt the all-pervasive, eternal life force of nature reminding him of his homeland in a foreign land.
“Once I took a long flight to San Diego in America, crossing many time zones. It was during the Festival of India in America, and I was invited to participate in an artists’ workshop. I woke up late in the morning, weary from jet lag, to hear a strange sound that I used to hear in my studio in Garhi in Delhi. I asked my friend, ‘Are there peacocks here?’ ‘Yes’, he said.” This would become the starting point of Dakoji’s engagement with nature as an energy pervading across the entire microcosm and macrocosm.
The peacock is seen in several of his compositions, singularly or with other forms. Dakoji also often imagines the energy of nature embodied in the persona of the elephant-headed god Ganesha, the remover of all obstacles and the receptacle of wisdom. The works of the 1980s and ’90s demonstrate an innate vibrancy and dynamism; with forms floating and dancing in space, interlaced and intertwined. These deeply personalized worlds carry echoes of a biodiversity that is both real and imagined.
The exhibition also includes more recent works, such as the series titled “Wheel of Life” (2022-2023). Here, the artist’s mastery over lithographic processes and chine collé are recognizable. The forms are fluid and full of grace; the linear elements are contrasted and balanced within compositions that embrace the earthy tones of the paper. While the presence of recurring motifs connects the series with Dakoji’s past works, the artist’s process always foregrounds experimentation and altered perspectives that allow for varied readings of the familiar.
The Concept of ‘Editions’
Ever since its modest origins in Germany in the 1440s, when the printing press became a new way of producing books, printmaking has tapped into the idea and technology of producing multiples to aid mass knowledge and a democratization of distribution. Even with a shift in purpose to create artistic visuals, printmaking retained this basic tenet of making multiples, and developed it into the concept of ‘editions.’ [3]
The distinction of the edition, or a fixed system to attribute multiples (that must look as much like each other as possible) in a numbered system, has remained a crucial part of printmaking well into modern and contemporary times. The service of a fully equipped master printing studio makes it possible for artists to create an approved print, that is then editioned by a master printer. This is the role that Devraj Dakoji has taken to perfection, even while pursuing his personal practice.
While accepted and popularized widely in the West as a fine art practice, in India the methodologies of printmaking, [4] and the existence of multiples are often misunderstood and seen as of lesser value than ‘unique’ paintings and sculpture. However, in recent decades, there has been a shift in this perception, as several galleries and cultural platforms have supported and developed discourse, research and inclusive exhibitions emphasizing the many possibilities emerging from printmaking. By presenting a wealth of Dakoji’s print editions, the exhibition makes a valuable contribution to this process of rethinking the field.
Signed, Lower Right: Devraj Dakoji is on at Exhibit 320, New Delhi, from January 31 to March 15, 2025.
Lina Vincent is an art historian and curator with two decades of experience in arts management.
Notes
For this review, the author has referred to her essays “The Singular,” Art Heritage Gallery, October 2024; and “Devraj Dakoji--Force of Nature,” review of the Devraj Dakoji Retrospective at NGMA, New Delhi, 2023, for Take on Art, November 2023.
[1] Mezzotint is an engraving/intaglio technique, developed in the 17th century, which allows for the creation of prints with soft gradations and usually velvety dark tones. The process involves roughening the metal printing plate by rocking a toothed metal tool across the surface. The printmaker creates dark and light tones by rubbing down or burnishing the rough surface to various degrees of smoothness, to reduce the ink-holding capacity of portions of the plate.
[2] Derived from French: chine means ‘thin tissue’ and collé ‘glue or paste.’ The most common method of using chine collé is to trim the thinner paper to the size required, then apply an adhesive paste to the paper and allow it to dry. When the printmaker is ready to print, the paper is arranged on the press with the plate, and the (dampened) heavier paper and the ensembled unit is run through a press. The damp paper reactivates the glue and the pressure adheres the thin printed sheet to the base sheet.
[3] An ‘original’ print is technically a unique work, given it is generally produced as a limited number of impressions (collectively known as an ‘edition’), and each print is given an edition number, typically written as a fraction (for example, 5/30). The number to the right of the slash indicates the edition size (in this example, 30”), while the figure to the left is the individual print’s number.
[4] India was introduced to the modern techniques of printmaking in 1556 when the first printing press was established in St Paul’s College in Goa, a Portuguese colony then. Though printing as a means of reproduction was already popular by this time, India remained unfamiliar to printmaking’s artistic faculties until European artists arrived.