Painting as Sadhana

Background 

Krishnalal Bhatt (1905–1990) was a Gujarati artist who came to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1933. Born into a Vaishnava brahmin family in Kathiawad, he grew up in Ahmedabad where his innate love of beauty led him first to the revolutionary Purani Mandal — a disciplined brotherhood founded by Ambubhai Purani under Sri Aurobindo's inspiration — and then to formal art training under Ravishankar Rawal and the Bengali artist Promode Kumar Chatterji in Baroda. Though he participated in the freedom movement, including Gandhi's Dandi March, he felt artistically unfulfilled, sensing a deeper source of inspiration in the spiritual dimensions of his Vaishnava heritage. This search, combined with his connection to the Purani Mandal, ultimately drew him to Pondicherry, where Sri Aurobindo's vision of art as a means of capturing divine beauty gave Krishnalal's creative life its true and lasting foundation.

Shantiniketan

Like most Hindu artists of the time, Krishnalal also chose subjects from the Puranas.

Already, he had earned a name as an artist and his paintings were exhibited, sold and printed in journals. "Once the sale of some paintings brought a decent amount and I took off to Nandababu's, at Shantiniketan. There I found an exhilarating atmosphere and sufficient nourishment; the obstructing walls began to collapse, my vision widened and deepened. Inadequate funds and lack of time forced me to return in six months, but the breaking out of old grooves and the opening up of inner vision were an enormous gain." Abanindranath in his Notes on Indian Artistic Anatomy says, "...let me also make this little request... especially of my friends and pupils, my fellow-pilgrims in the quest for that realisation which is the fulfilment of all art, that they may not take these aesthetic canons and form-analyses of our art treatises, with all the rigours of their standards and their demonstrations, as representing absolute and inviolable laws, nor deprive their art-endeavours of the sustaining breath of freedom, by confining themselves and their works within the limits of Shastric demonstrations."

Ahmedabad

In January 1933, Krishnalal returned from Shantiniketan to Ahmedabad, his course unfinished due to lack of funds. In July 1927, when he had returned from Baroda, also without being able to complete his course, torrential rains were lashing central Gujarat—in one week 53″ in Ahmedabad, far more than it normally obtained throughout a year (the worst affected was Kheda with 100″)—the total damages were assessed at several crores. Ahmedabad's convoluted alleys were flooded, the recently constructed drains were choked, 6,000 houses had collapsed, and over 50,000 persons had been rendered homeless.¹ Said the family wag Eevo varhaad paidone, eevo varhaad paidone, ke aapno Karsan chhe ne, ee Vadodarethi haathini ambaadipar behhi ne aiyvo! (Such a deluge, our Karsan returned from Baroda in the howdah of a royal elephant!) Both times new vistas had been opened to Krishnalal; enthusiasm and inspiration had filled him to overflowing when rude circumstances had thrown him back to this same uninspiring situation.

He started teaching in the SNDT College for women. But "subsequently, even my family and social situation became stifling walls."² If it was strenuous to advance on the path Nandababu had opened to him while fulfilling his family responsibilities, it was impossible to join the Congress politics as expected by his Mandal, for his past experience in that field had not been encouraging.

It is at such times, writes his brother, Vasudev, when the soul's anguish is at a high pitch, that Divine Grace smiles upon a man. Soon after Krishnalal took up his art career, Ambubhai Purani gave up his revolutionary activities at the cost of being misunderstood and denigrated even by his nearest and dearest, and had settled in Pondicherry under the aegis of Sri Aurobindo. All through those years, Krishnalal had kept in continuous touch with Ambubhai. Coming to know of his thirst for further progress in Art, Ambubhai inspired him to visit the Ashram and seek the guidance of the Mother.

Pondicherry

On 10 August 1933, Ambubhai sent Pujalal and Vishnuprasad to the railway station to receive Krishnalal. He was put up in the Chettiar Hotel and asked to write a letter to the Mother. This letter is the first one of his correspondence reproduced below. Along with Krishnalal's, Ambubhai sent a note of his own, "...He has taken one month's leave from his post. But he would remain up to November if allowed—(and even longer if he is acclimatised to the life here, I think)." Sri Aurobindo replied: "He can remain. Mother will give him a room in the Ashram if he wants." And the Mother wrote underneath, "Approved."

Krishnalal writes, "It was then that my real journey began. There certainly had been some progress so far, but a life and progress in the true direction, according to my inmost vision, began only now. Here the pictures I made of birds and animals... of landscapes, of the sea, had an added element which I would never have obtained in Gujarat. But now I turned more towards symbolic pictures. In all this, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother helped me both externally as well as internally. They alone perceived my inner movements and began to turn me towards the true nature of Art.

"But it was not at all easy to turn that way. Outwardly I knew nothing about Yoga. I used to even think, 'I am an artist; spirituality is not for me.' It was difficult to pull me out of this, but it was because of the devotee in my nature that it was finally made possible. Gradually, I immersed myself in the atmosphere of the Ashram. But the difficulty of progressing in my art still remained. I managed to accept the new lifestyle of the Ashram within, but to bring out its influence in my art took a long time. The sanskaras, thoughts, techniques, etc. with which I had begun my training had established themselves inside and kept swallowing up whatever new things were coming in. How much of an obstacle the narrow viewpoints and methods one has learned can then become, can be known only by one who has to go through this experience. Things that had made a home in my nature refused to leave. But under the influence of the new Force, it has been finally possible, and my pictures have, thanks to it, acquired a new element.... I may reproduce here the words of the one who has made it possible, and express my gratitude to Her." Then Krishnalal gives three extracts from Mother's talk of 28 July 1929:

"There is nothing to prevent a Yogi from being an artist or an artist from being a Yogi. But when you are in Yoga, there is a profound change in the values of things, of Art as of everything else; you begin to look at Art from a very different standpoint."

"The discipline of Art has at its centre the same principle as the discipline of Yoga. In both the aim is to become more and more conscious; in both you have to learn to see and feel something that is beyond the ordinary vision and feeling, to go within and bring out from there deeper things."

"When a true artist, one who looks for his creative source to a higher world, turns to Yoga, he will find that his inspiration becomes more direct and powerful and his expression clearer and deeper."

Says Vasudev: "Under Mother's guidance, Krishnalal set off on a quest of his own. He did many portraits and landscapes, but came to be known especially for his animals and birds; his sea-scapes are considered by some critics to be among the most striking depictions of the sea. Among the larger works he did are the panels in the passages on the first floor of the Meditation House, 'The Wave' which hangs behind Mother's Darshan Chair in the Meditation Hall on the first floor of the Meditation House, the series on the walls of the Reception Room, and his last major painting—a large mural in acrylic colours at the entrance of Golconde, which he did in the early 1980s."