Art’s premier sign-painter: Shanti Dave

THE VETERAN ARTIST’S EXHIBITION WILL RUN AT MARVEL ART GALLERY FROM OCTOBER 10-16

Art’s premier sign-painter: Shanti Dave

Harmony Siganporia
Many in the art world will be familiar with the name of Shanti Dave, the veteran artist long associated with Air India’s famed mu- rals at its offices around the world. However, what few know is that this Delhi-based artist is Ahmedabad-born and bred.
Exhibiting his work in his city of birth af- ter more than five decades, Ahmedabad’s Marvel Art Gallery is currently playing host to Dave’s recent artwork. Titled ‘Layers of Perception’, the exhibition will run from Oc- tober 10-16.
This septuagenarian began his career as a sign-painter on Ahmedabad’s Relief road. “I come from very humble beginnings, and started working on signage and posters on Relief road when I was barely out of school. It was there that I had occasion to work with the redoubtable R Gajjar on a number of movie posters and hoardings, which impart- ed in me skills that stood me in excellent stead at art school,” maintains the veteran.
Ask him what these skills are, and pat comes the response, “Working on movie hoardings made me dispel my fear of bright and vivid colours, and large ‘spaces’ to fill in.”
Never one to believe in fixity, which he says leads to stagnation, the artist has con- stantly experimented with form and style over the decades, more to keep himself sat- isfied than to cater to the whims of a fickle consumerist audience. His current exhibi- tion, ‘Layers of Perception’, is, in a sense, a homecoming in more ways than one. Not only is it being showcased in Ahmedabad, but for its form, the artist has chosen to dabble with the shapes and inferences of cal- ligraphy the physical form of alphabets and letters – which is a hearkening back to his beginnings as a sign-painter.
“I think the word ‘abstract’ is bandied about too loosely: the style my work falls into is closer to amurat or ‘without defined form’. Since this style does away with impo- sition of form or boundary, it is open to new- er and deeper interpretation each time one sees a given work,” he explains.
The physical shells of shapes and struc- tures that come together to form letters are present in his work a part of the three- pronged Om somewhere; a curve that could turn into the Devanagari ‘Ka’ or ‘L’ elsewhere and he shows an impeccable understanding of his acrylic medium in that, controlling viscosity and consistency, he is able to create the effect of translucence, veritably creating playful textures and inviting the observer to unravel layers of perception, much like the title of this col- lection promises.

“I come from very humble beginnings, and started working on signage and posters on Relief road when I was bare- ly out of school. It was there that I had occasion to work with the redoubtable R Gajjar on a number of movie posters and hoardings,” – Shanti Dave