We enter the magical world of art, each with our unique vision.
The artist creates and so do we . . . the magic lies in the exchange, the entanglement, the voyage into a painting.
It carries no unilateral message like a street sign.
Colours and lines speak, sing and dance.
Paintings evoke rather than describe.
Relations in space change meaning and new relationships emerge between the viewer and the work of art.
Shanu Lahiri (1928-2013), trained in art in Calcutta and France, lived in different places in India, returning to settle down in Calcutta where she taught for several decades at Rabindra Bharati University Calcutta. She continued to paint and experiment with a number of media until her last days.
In the catalogue introducing her last exhibition ‘Shanu Lahiri: Recent Works’ in Calcutta, February 2012, art historian Tapati Guha-Thakurta writes: ‘The artist, with this exhibition, enters the 85th year of her life and the seventh decade of a remarkable professional career that began in 1950 with her first solo exhibition that she held while still a student at the Government School of Art’.
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Moving with ease from painting to cooking, delighting in poetry and performances of all kinds, Shanu Lahiri invited participation whether it was in her ever hospitable home or in the public spaces of streets and walls of the city. She nurtured an extraordinary relationship with the city as a street muralist and public art activist. Her zest for befriending people extended to unusual creatures—birds, a cat, a mongoose, a monkey and a line of dogs, some of the latter finding their way to her paintings and sketches. As in her everyday conversation, she brings to her writing a curious and observant eye, an infectious sense of humour, and a spontaneous delight in camaraderie with old and young.
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