The Cholamandal Artists Village will flip 60 subsequent 12 months. Nine and a half acres have been bought over time, as funds have been rustled up. A batik exhibition in 1965 was a promote out and gave the group 50,000 rupees. Many put their share down for a chunk of land in Injambakkam. The sea and its sandy shores beckoned them. Three artists from the commune converse to us.
P Gopinath (b. 1948)
“We all paid for the land,” says Gopinath. Venkatapathy’s was the first home, and Paniker’s the second. Gopinath lived in a thatched hut. “Paniker was a father figure, philosopher, teacher — you could reach out to him any time,” remembers Gopinath fondly. Those days they offered work for 100 to 150 rupees. The sensible however unstable Ramanujam, whom Paniker rescued and introduced into the group made drawings on the again of playing cards, with no cash to purchase paper.
“We used to walk to the beach and help the fishermen drag in the net so that we could get free fish,” laughs Gopinath. When a tea-kadai opened, it was a welcome hang-out. “Those were the best times in our life, despite our struggles. We learnt to understand each other, not interfere with each other’s ideology.” Cholamandal’s setting was invaluable to its resident artists, not like others, not as fortunate. “Many good artists in our college were later lost in the crowd, dependent on work from cinema hoardings and advertising.” Gopinath’s curiosity in color was already cemented, from his admiration for Gaugin to miniature work. “A few trips to Kangra strengthened my resolve to create my own pictorial grammar.”
Senior artist P Gopinath at Cholamandal artwork village
| Photo Credit:
Akhila Easwaran
Not everybody believed artists might reside collectively. A visiting journalist wrote a scathing evaluate — ‘the people who started this ‘utopia’ might be pushed off in a catamaran into the Bay of Bengal.’ Gopinath says, “We were lucky that Lonely Planet wrote a good article that drew in crowds and changed such perceptions.”
SG Vasudev (b. 1941)
When KCS Paniker came upon that his college students, SG Vasudev and Arnawaz have been shut associates, he inspired their match. She was a free-spirited Parsi lady, and he was from Mysuru, already breaking conference by becoming a member of the School of Arts and Crafts. It would grow to be a wedding of two fine-tuned inventive minds. Cholamandal gave freedom to artists in each strategy to share lives, to collaborate and to search out their true spirit. The solely son (he had two sisters) of mother and father who hoped he could be a health care provider or engineer, Vasudev made artwork his chosen path, inspired by artwork critic G Venkatachalam. Now, he needed to show it. After faculty, he secured a coveted National Scholarship. “I told my father he need not send any more money.” Vasudev turned an completed visible artist, together with his uncommon methods of layered work, beautiful copper reliefs and tapestries.
Artist SG Vasudev
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
“Paniker started Cholamandal so that we could independently make a living. We never had to touch Government money,” says Vasudev with pleasure. From his early days at the village, he was thinking about the sister-arts. An open-air theatre was constructed, with Paniker exhorting, “What about non-artists? We need to make a place for them as well.” Here Vasudev invited poet AK Ramanujam and theater-director Girish Karnad. Musicians and dancers even carried out free of value.
After Arnawaz handed away from most cancers, Vasudev moved to Bangalore. He later married writer-activist Ammu Joseph. From cowl designs for Kannada books to Ranga Shankara theatre’s emblem, workshops and camps, and now Art Park in Bangalore, Vasudev has at all times been open to art-forms. At 84, he’s making collages, which he started throughout the pandemic whereas experimenting with marriage ceremony card reduce outs. From poets to craftsmen, Vasudev has at all times embraced various influences. The collage exemplifies his spirit of collaboration.
C Douglas (b. 1951)
“I visited Cholamandal as a student and stayed over weekends. Paniker had retired and I met him there,” remembers C Douglas, who was at the College of Arts from 1970 to 1976. “Conversations around Paniker used to be about art and literature, his love for Wuthering Heights.” Here, Douglas found that oil paint was invented to imitate pores and skin tones and flesh. When Douglas confirmed his small oil canvases, Paniker noticed they regarded like tempera. The richness of oils was lacking. “He then prepared a small canvas with layers of white coloured oil and gave it to me, saying — try this. The slippery surface made so much difference. It gave body to forms.”
Senior artist C. Douglas at Cholamandal artwork village
| Photo Credit:
Akhila Easwaran
Already, Josef James, who was educating Economics at Madras Christian College in Tambaram was drawn to the artists village. James turned the chronicler of the Madras Movement, and editor of the journal Artrends, which was printed from 1961 to 1982 by the Progressive Painters Association. Douglas reminisces, “Life did have completeness. Modern Indian art was coming into a historic timeline.”
In 1978, artwork connoisseur Sara Abraham organised a travelling exhibition Kala Yatra. Six of the 12 artists have been from Madras, as Douglas says, “I was a part of this, along with Ganesh Pyne, Ram Kumar, Bikash Bhattacharya, Hussain, Surya Prakash, Lakshma Goud, Janakiram, Nandagopal and Gopinath, as well as Thotta Tharani. The show was completely sold out.”
Published – September 22, 2025 01:08 pm IST
