Manmohan Balkrishna Samant (1924-2004), also known as Mohan Samant, rose within the Indian contemporary art scene in the 1950s. His experiments with texture, style and painterly surface led cultural critic Ranjot Hoskote to praise him as a “one-man avant-garde”. [1] However, the scant scholarly attention to his work has thus far meant the lack of a comprehensive evaluation of his career and contributions from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Samant grew up in Bombay in a culturally rich environment. [2] Surrounded by old family photographs, reproductions of Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings, and his mother’s endeavours with craft at their Goregaon home, he was exposed to the expansive possibilities of art from an early age. He regularly visited the Victoria and Albert Museum (today, CSMVS Mumbai), where he closely observed the realistic miniatures of Indian villages. Later on, Gond art, Basohli and Jain miniature paintings, along with the frescoes from Ajanta and the leather puppetry of Andhra Pradesh inspired his work. [3] His quintessential style of experimenting with textured surfaces was born out of his interest in the “art of making cinema posters with improvised palette knives”. [4]
In 1947, Samant enrolled at the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay. He studied under the guidance of Shankar Balwant Palsikar, who was appointed as a teacher at the institution that same year. Palsikar first introduced Samant to the Basohli style, which left an indelible mark on the artist’s visual language. [5] Much like scenes occurring in different periods and spaces could be brought together in sequences in these miniatures, Samant could weave together various disparate elements in one frame. [6] According to G.M. Butcher, it is possible to draw a direct correlation between Palsikar’s “Sinner’s Divine” (1950) and Samant’s “Steps unto the Pride and Prestige” (1953). For instance, the presence of footprints between the two figures in Palsikar’s piece, representing either Vishnu or Buddha, also appears as a motif in Samant’s work. [7] In terms of Samant’s stylistic approach, Marcella Sirhandi notes that “Steps unto the Pride and Prestige” is also reminiscent of Paul Klee’s “Black Columns in a Landscape”: “Both works are crowded, with vertical and horizontal shapes pushing into one another.” [8] She also highlights how Samant and Palsikar’s oeuvres are characterized by the confluence of “Indian miniatures and Egyptian figuration”. [9] However, owing to the wide range of styles both these artists referred to, it becomes impossible to confine them to any specific tradition of art-making.
Samant received his diploma in painting and drawing in 1952. That year, he also participated in the annual exhibition of the Bombay Art Society, which not only brought him critical acclaim but provided a momentous occasion to meet M.F. Husain for the first time. The same year, K.H. Ara, one of the founding members of the Progressive Artists Group (PAG), invited Samant to join their group. Samant exhibited his works at a seminal 1956 show, curated by Thomas Keehn, called Eight Painters: N.S. Bendre, V.S. Gaitonde, Satish Gujral, M.F. Husain, Krishen Khanna, K.S. Kulkarni, Ram Kumar and Mohan Samant. By this time, Samant’s work had gained enough traction to be featured in Ajit Mookerjee’s famous book, Modern Art in India. [10] Soon after, he was awarded an Italian scholarship in 1957, and the Rockefeller fellowship in 1959. This funding allowed him to explore and study the landscape of art and architecture in both Italy and the United States. During his stay in the former, he became friends with an Egyptian painter and their travels inspired him to study the hieroglyphics on temple walls. The influence of the latter can be seen in his painting “Abstract Signs and Temple Frieze”, which combines erotic Indian figures with panels of other symbols and signs.
While in America, Samant paid close attention to the growing movement of Abstract Expressionism in New York in the 1950s and ’60s, which embraced fresh ways of playing with mediums, techniques, visual language and the scale of art. [11] Its influences came to be reflected in his own style, where he combined paint with diverse materials, including cement, plastic, sand and string. His 1966 exhibition at the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation in Bombay saw him present new works on a monumental scale. Not all these experiments were well received. For instance, Nissim Ezekiel described these pieces as resembling “cave art”. Discussing Samant’s “Gates of Hell”, he pointed out its “overconfident simplicity”: “take away the size and the bravado, and there is nothing here.” [12] However, Gieve Patel felt that Samant was worthy of more praise. Visiting the artist’s shows at the Taj and Pundole Galleries in Bombay in 1967, Patel noted the “lyricism” of these paintings. He wrote that in Samant’s painting, “The Night Bird and Moon Girl”, the dominance of black is broken by hints of blue, while rope is used to form tensile patterns which “seem to erupt into a musical phrase”. Patel also appreciated Samant’s abilities to remain unburdened by the rules of painting, and to keep improving his work by tearing it apart and putting it back together to create new surfaces, textures and moods. [13]
The 1960s marked a rapid proliferation in the number of exhibitions Samant participated in. Moving beyond India, he showed his works in London, Tokyo, Munich, Rome and New York (the last would become his place of residence after 1968). This was also a decade when art was redefined with an explicit social and political purpose. The popular protests against the Vietnam War, the second wave of feminism, the gay liberation movement, and the anti-racist activism in America, along with youth revolutions all over the world, forced changes within the Venice Biennale. Protesters in 1968 stormed the Biennale and turned the art works against the wall, a show of defiance and resistance, which coerced the organizers to initiate institutional changes. [14] Against the backdrop of this churning, Samant’s work gained traction -- a sign of greater inclusivity in the visual arts -- but was also criticized for its lack of emotional and social depth.
Samant’s emphasis on his “influences” is perhaps what made him different from most other artists of his time. While his contemporaries at the PAG were drawing inspiration from postcolonial ideologies, Samant transcended such boundaries to conceive an art that carried the potential of compressing a multitude of styles in a single painting. [15] In “Impending Storm”, for instance, one finds a Mayan face playing an Indian tanpura. Ranjit Hoskote has also mentioned how Samant “traversed and overcame the medium-specific art practice of the Progressives and their contemporaries.” [16] Commenting on his own practice, Samant said: “In my painting I have swallowed the entire history ofthousandsofyearsand synchronized it into a modern idiom. Nobody can tell me I am a copyist, because I am just as modern as anyone else. Except that my influences do not come from the contemporary art world; they come from the entire panorama of art history.” [17]
In an exhibition review of a Samant retrospective held in Mumbai, Riddhi Doshi describes the artist’s work as an example of “experimental art”. [18] Kamini Sawhney hails him as a “real innovator”, who moved from “total abstraction/nonfiguration” during the 1950s, to working with sand and glue on paper in the ’60s, paper cut-outs in the ’70s, and wires in the ’80s. [19] Elaborating further on his techniques, Jeffrey Wechsler writes: “Samant’s work is often referred to as ‘mixed media’, which while a traditional term and accurate in a general sense, hardly does full justice to the chimerical nature of much of the artist’s output. Instead of the imprecise and nondescript term ‘mixed media’, perhaps much of Samant’s art can be called ‘pictorial assemblage’.” [20]
Samant was also a prolific sarangi player, and his wife Jillian confirmed that his musical sensibilities were closely tied with his other artistic pursuits. Defying the practice of repeating a note till it achieved perfection, Samant always played a raga in a single go. Similarly, his paintings embodied spontaneity, with the artist refraining from any form of preparatory sketching. [21]
Samant’s multifaceted works were part of several exhibitions throughout his life. Following his first solo show in 1952, his works travelled to various prestigious galleries and museums in India and across the world, including the National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi) and the Museum of Modern Art (New York). [22] A recipient of the Gold Medal from the Bombay Art Society in 1956 and 1957, and the Lalit Kala Akademi’s National Award in 1956, Samant was lauded with the Asian American Heritage Award for lifetime achievement in the arts in 2000. [23]
Samant passed away in January 2004. [24] Soon after his death, Prabhakar Kolte published a moving article in Art News Magazine of India, referring to the artist as “one of the heroes of early post-independence Indian art”. [25] In 2008, Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai, organized a retrospective titled Mohan Samant: Mixed Media Works. Another significant show, called Mohan Samant: Paintings, was curated by Kamini Sawhney and Jeffrey Wechsler at the Jehangir Nicholson Art Gallery at CSMVS, Mumbai, in 2014, reflecting the plethora of works and the impressive legacy the artist has left behind.
Notes
[1] Ranjit Hoskote, “The One-Man Avant Garde: Mohan Samant, Cutouts and Works on Paper, 1974-75,” in Mohan Samant: Mixed Media Works, Exhibition catalogue (Mumbai: Pundole Art Gallery, 2008), unpaginated.
[2] Marcella Sirhandi, “Mohan Samant (1924-2004),” in Mohan Samant: Paintings (Ahmedabad: Mapin, 2013), 183.
[3] Rosalyn D’Mello, “Mohan Samant: Picture the Outsider,” Open Magazine, November 15, 2021 ; Ekta Mohan, “Nothing is Sacred in Art,” Mid-day, September 30, 2018.
[4] D’Mello, “Mohan Samant.”
[5] Sirhandi, “Mohan Samant (1924-2004),” 189.
[6] Benita Fernando, “The Elusive Mohan Samant,” Mint Lounge, October 19, 2018.
[7] Sirhandi, “Mohan Samant,” 194.
[8] Ibid., 198.
[9] Ibid., 194.
[10] Ibid., 190-199.
[11] Hoskote, “The One-Man Avant Garde.”
[12] Nissim Ezekiel, “Mohan Samant Paintings: A Master’s Touch,” The Times of India Archives, February 3, 1966.
[13] Gieve Patel, “Singing Self: Samant’s Response of Joy,” The Times of India Archives, February 2, 1967.
[14] Nina Siegal, “Dissent, Diplomacy and Drama at the Venice Biennale,” The New York Times, April 19, 2024.
[15] Amruta Lakhe, “Master of Many Strokes,” The Indian Express, October 10, 2013.
[16] Hoskote, “The One-Man Avant Garde.”
[17] D’Mello, “Picture the Outsider.”
[18] Riddhi Doshi, “Forgotten Modernist’s Art on Display,” Hindustan Times, October 8, 2013.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Jeffrey Wechsler, “Mohan Samant: Individualism and Context,” in Mohan Samant: Paintings (Ahmedabad: Mapin, 2013), 358.
[21] Pooja Pillai, “Music on My Palette,” The Indian Express, October 21, 2018.
[22] Profile of Mohan Samant, Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation (JNAF).
[23] Mohan Samant Biography, Pundole Art Gallery.
[24] Profile of Mohan Samant, JNAF.
[25] Kolte, as cited in Sirhandi, “Mohan Samant (1924-2004),” 241.