Master artist Shiavax Chavda’s (1914-1990) dancers, abstracts, temple sculptures, nudes, roosters, crocodiles all vied for attention at the 26th showing at the annual Indian Masters’ Retrospective at the Nehru Centre Art Gallery. About 80 images were on show for a fortnight, ending January 7, 2019.
Shiavax Chavda and his creations Ocean of Grace (center) and Blue Krishna
The Retrospective gave equal importance to the different phases of the painter’s styles, the maestro’s daughter Jeroo told Parsiana on December 26, 2018. The images on display included some of the artist’s work when he was at the Slade School of Fine Art in the UK; some previously unexhibited temple drawings from Khajuraho; two of his images of Christ previously shown at the Vatican. The artist’s son Pervez called his father "very verstatile... He used to change the themes of his paintings each year... He is best known for his line drawings capturing performances of various dancers.” The Retrospective did full justice to his range, he said.
Shiavax returned to abstract in the last 20 years of his life "because he had done enough portraits... scenery, daily life, folk dancers, ballet dancers and Indian classical dancers,” Jeroo told the mid-day of December 16. "He was sent by the then governor of the North East provinces to Nagaland to sketch all the tribes, because they felt Indian missionaries were converting the tribes and they were losing their way of life. So, he had sketched everything humanly possible,” she said.
Shiavax’s media included paper, canvas, silk, plywood, Chinese ink, crayon, watercolors, tempera and oils. His paintings are part of collections in India and abroad, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Budapest Museum, The National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, and in corporate houses like the Tatas. The Lalit Kala Akademi Fellow (1986) had held more than 40 one-man shows in India, Asia, Europe and the USA.
"The dancing line: Revisiting Shiavax Chavda,” at the Jehangir Art Gallery in October 2017 was the last time Bombay audiences had appreciated the artist’s works (see "Remembering Shiavax,” Events and Personalities, Parsiana, November 21, 2017).