Rabindranath Tagore and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had countless supporters, friends, admirers, disciples, devotees... One can easily run out of descriptive nouns when thinking of the many inhabitants of their many worlds and of Shantiniketan and Sevagram. It is particularly interesting when one comes across persons who had belonged to both these institutions and who felt that they owed different aspects of their creative energies to very specific environments built by these two personalities. Devi Prasad — studio potter, artist trained in the tradition of Nandalal Bose, photographer and expert DIY man – was one such person. In his sumptuously illustrated book, The Making of a Modern Indian Artist-Craftsman — Devi Prasad, the art historian, Naman Ahuja, introduces us to his subject’s entire oeuvre. Ahuja curated an exhibition at New Delhi’s Lalit Kala Akademi in 2010 using over 500 artworks and the book followed a year later — sadly, a few months after the demise of the artist.

The son of a well-to-do cloth merchant from Dehra Dun, Devi Prasad developed an early interest in craft, watching his mother Ramkali fashion perfect choolhas and brooms. Encouraged by his older brother, he started applying to art schools and was overjoyed when, in 1938, a hand-written postcard from Nandalal Bose offered him a place at Kala Bhavana. He was then 17 years old. Devi Prasad spent the next six highly creative years in Visva-Bharati, painting and drawing and imperceptibly absorbing the growing buzz of the freedom movement. He wrote of the influence of Gurudev on him and, of course, of Mastermoshai — as Nandalal Bose was called by his students.

While Tagore, whose educational philosophy was based on a firm belief in an East-West synergy, could not agree with some of Gandhi’s views, he would never think of stopping his students from choosing their own ideological positions. Many, including Devi Prasad, joined the Quit India movement in 1942. In fact, Nandalal had been asked by the Mahatma to organize handicrafts-based exhibitions at the Congress sessions. By then, Devi Prasad was well integrated into the syncretist Kala Bhavan ethos that included a receptive understanding of the influential Bauhaus movement. He found the latter’s emphasis on functional art very appealing and he wrote approvingly of the movement that treated “functionality and aesthetics” as “two sides of the same coin”. In this environment of many influences, currents and eddies, it was not surprising that Devi Prasad experimented with more than one art-form, including photography. He had started taking photographs of people and visitors to Shantiniketan, his portfolio adding to the fairly substantial one of Visva-Bharati developed by Shambhu Shaha and others.

Devi Prasad’s eye would often zero in on moments unintended for the public gaze of the camera. In this historic composition for instance, of the two great men and a remarkable woman on the Gandhis’ last visit to Visva-Bharati in 1940, each seems to be absorbed in thoughts that belong far away, unmindful of the adoring crowds that push against the dais. They are, of course, fairly old by then, given to bouts of deep introspection, often of a pessimistic kind.

By the time he left Visva-Bharati, Devi Prasad’s emotive wash and tempera works reflected the influence of Abanindranath, Benode Behari Mukherjee, Ramkinkar Baij and Mastermoshai, rare teachers of a fast-evolving art style to be known as the Bengal School. While the many seasons of nature and the Santhal population of the region remained an abiding preoccupation of most students, Devi Prasad’s horse on its back, foaming at the mouth, and the pregnant sow standing before a dhak tree reflected a slightly different preoccupation. Clearly influenced by Far Eastern art, there is a distinct, somewhat high-strung, movement in both, a disturbing quality that must surely affect the discerning viewer. Devi Prasad’s life too was soon to be one of movement, of changing geographic locales.

When he moved to Sevagram, Devi Prasad branched out into pottery using terracotta, textile and exhibition design. The exhibition that he organized for the first Congress session after Independence in Jaipur in 1948 was a high point in imagination and a certain inherent technical expertise. Showcasing the Gandhian constructive programme, the venue consisted of 15 pavilions — all made of timber, bamboo and reed (sarkhanda) covering 1.2 million square feet. The 48-foot-high viewing tower designed without much structural knowledge was an instant attraction as crowds queued to climb up for a panoramic view of the beautiful pink city below.

In the 18 years that he spent at Sevagram, Devi Prasad’s genius in pottery evolved. Soon to be deeply influenced by A Potter’s Book, by the British studio potter, Bernard Leach, he writes that apart from learning about the technical side of pottery, “the book taught me how to look at a pot and to understand the elements that make a pot a living object”. Gradually, an Indian studio practice was emerging, the definite lines of utilitarian objects often overlaid with the painterly eye of one trained in the fine brush strokes of the Bengal School. Around the same time, photography also emerged as a serious interest for Devi Prasad, many portraits and landscapes depending heavily on chiaroscuro and the unexpected, of subjects caught unawares, trees and branches veering just that bit off the frame.

Shadows play an important part in many photographs, sharp counterpoints to the wide expanses of sky and clouds, an unmistakable tribute to the villages Devi Prasad had chosen to live in. It was at Sevagram too that he became an art teacher, gradually evolving what the educationist, Krishna Kumar, has called his theory of peace. Shoring up on Rabindranath Tagore and Gandhi’s understanding of freedom for India, he nurtured the individual child’s quest for freedom and creativity through various forms of art.

Devi Prasad’s wanderings and mission of self-discovery were by no means over, and in 1962, he arrived in London to work as the general secretary of the War Resisters’ International, a well-established pacifist organization. Time away from work was spent on various DIY activities — a necessary pastime, as these were financially hard days for the family. Pottery came back into his life in 1973, when, as a parting gift, his colleagues at WRI gave him a wheel. He now became a professional potter, selling his teapots, bowls and vases to a discerning public. His meeting with his hero, Bernard Leach, in 1972 had been productive and useful indeed. When he returned to India and to Shantiniketan in the 1970s as a visiting professor, Devi Prasad tried hard to re-energize pottery — its styles and methods — as it was being taught at Visva-Bharati. Clearly, a more lasting outcome of his second stint at Tagore’s university was his photo documentary on the work of the sculptor, Ramkinkar.

Over several days, he photographed in large format the artist’s sculptures, a few pieces salvaged from the niches and corners within Kala Bhavan. As he had the sculptures removed from their spaces in the campus to a controlled studio environment, Devi Prasad created the mise en scène for another, more focussed, viewing. He introduced the camera as an active agent in the creation of what could be seen as an intense, if not alternative, visual discourse around the work of Ramkinkar. Devi Prasad’s interest in photography started in adolescence and remained all his life.

His writing came later. He wrote on subjects as varied as Lenin and Gandhi, contemporary revolutionaries, non-violence, witch-hunts in Europe, Tagore’s paintings and the state of Indian pottery. Soon, the artist added pen and camera to his creative repertoire, recording and memorializing each phase of his many lives and different homes. However, as the ceramic artist, Kristine Michael, writes, his most lasting contribution was in convincing the “formal art school trained ceramist, the hobby potter and the development field worker, the wisdom and aesthetic of our rich cultural heritage”.

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