An exhibition in a Paris hospital casts new light on a forgotten Indian painter
For half a century, nearly a hundred watercolour paintings by an artist known only as the “Anonymous Indian” sat in the basement of a French psychiatric hospital, forgotten among old files and debris. Featuring scenes of nature and daily life as well as allusions to contemporary politics, the works were sent in 1950 to the Saint-Anne hospital in Paris by Ramanlal Patel, a psychoanalyst based in Bombay.
With their gentle colours and undulating lines, the paintings hardly evoke madness, let alone a case of “paranoid psychosis.” But such was Patel’s diagnosis of their creator in the partial set of observations that accompanied them. Briefly displayed, they were then left in a dank corner until a team of psychiatrists rediscovered them at the end of the twentieth century.
Founded in 1867, the Saint-Anne hospital became a centre for art-based therapies after a chance encounter during the Second World War. In 1943, Léon Schwarz-Abrys, a Jewish painter of Hungarian origin living in Paris, feared he would be sent to a Nazi extermination camp. He had himself admitted to Saint-Anne and hid there until Allied forces liberated the city a year later. Many of his fellow patients, he realised, were artists of great originality. After leaving the hospital, Schwarz
Abrys joined a growing network of psychologists, artists and commentators who were convinced that art had a place in psychotherapy and that the art of the “mad” could offer lessons to the sane. The critic Jean Dubuffet, who coined the term art brut—“raw art”—spoke for many leaders in the French avant-garde when he celebrated the mad and other outsider artists as “unspoiled by artistic culture” and followers of “their own impulses” to make pure, original creations.
This story is from the October 2018 edition of The Caravan.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the October 2018 edition of The Caravan.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Mob Mentality
How the Modi government fuels a dangerous vigilantism
RIP TIDES
Shahidul Alam’s exploration of Bangladeshi photography and activism
Trickle-down Effect
Nepal–India tensions have advanced from the diplomatic level to the public sphere
Editor's Pick
ON 23 SEPTEMBER 1950, the diplomat Ralph Bunche, seen here addressing the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The first black Nobel laureate, Bunche was awarded the prize for his efforts in ending the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Shades of The Grey
A Pune bakery rejects the rigid binaries of everyday life / Gender
Scorched Hearths
A photographer-nurse recalls the Delhi violence
Licence to Kill
A photojournalist’s account of documenting the Delhi violence
CRIME AND PREJUDICE
The BJP and Delhi Police’s hand in the Delhi violence
Bled Dry
How India exploits health workers
The Bookshelf: The Man Who Learnt To Fly But Could Not Land
This 2013 novel, newly translated, follows the trajectory of its protagonist, KTN Kottoor.