PEAKLIFE

In the lead-up to the 175th birth anniversary of Indian master artist Raja Ravi Varma (29th April 1848 – 2nd October 1906), Bengaluru’s Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation is happy to reveal its first overseas participation for the year 2023 in collaboration with Louvre Abu Dhabi!

Nine chromolithographs from the Ravi Varma Press belonging to Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation, have been loaned to the Louvre Abu Dhabi as part of the museum’s fifth anniversary culture season(November 2022 onwards). The new season explores the many geographic paths and singular voices that have created significant artistic and cultural connections across the globe.

Today, India is the world’s leading film producer, with more than 1,500 films a year in about 20 languages exported throughout Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The exhibition explores the history of Indian cinema from its beginnings in the late 19th century up to the present.

The nine chromolithographs printed in the various Ravi Varma Presses will be part of a larger exhibition titled Bollywood Superstars: A Short Story of Indian Cinema (25th January – 4th June 2023) organized in partnership with Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac and France Muséums, and will present the richness of the Indian subcontinent’s art and civilisation through its long tradition of image making.

Through more than 80 artworks including photographs, textiles, graphic arts, costumes and over 30 film extracts, the exhibition explores the rich history of Indian cinema from its beginnings in the late 19th century up to the present. The artworks come from the collections of Louvre Abu Dhabi, Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Musée de l’armée, Musée national des arts asiatiques – Guimet, al-Sabah Collection, Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation and Priya Paul Collection.

The exhibition is co-curated by Julien Rousseau, Curator and Head of the Asian Collections, Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, and Hélène Kessous, PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnology, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, with the support of Dr. Souraya Noujaim, Director of Scientific, Curatorial and Collections Management at Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Digital images of two original oil paintings by Raja Ravi Varma, including the alluring work ‘The Coquette’ that belong to important private collectors from India, will feature in the catalogue produced by Louvre Abu Dhabi for this exhibition.

Gitanjali Maini, Managing Trustee & CEO, Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation shared, “The premise of the Foundation is to share its assets, research, information and knowledge with museums, other institutions and researchers who are keen to know more about this great artist. Working with the Louvre Abu Dhabi, shortlisting the chromolithographs from our collection and brainstorming with them for this landmark exhibition that they are curating has been an exciting process. We are grateful to the entire team at the Louvre Abu Dhabi for thinking of including Raja Ravi Varma and his work into such an important international exhibition.”

Manuel Rabaté, Director of Louvre Abu Dhabi, commented, “In a museum that invites visitors to discover artworks from all over the world, we are privileged to work again with Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac on this exhibition that explores the image in movement, after our first collaboration in 2019 on an exhibition about the development of photography in its first years of existence. Bollywood Superstars is a feast not only to Indian audiences who are among the most important nationalities that visit Louvre Abu Dhabi, but also to everyone with an appetite for the rich culture of the sub-continent and its roots.”

Bollywood Superstars: A Short Story of Indian CinemaBollywood Superstars is supported by PureHealth, as Louvre Abu Dhabi’s exhibition season partner. Details of the rich cultural and educational programme accompanying Bollywood Superstars: A Short Story of Indian Cinema, the exhibition, will be announced at a later date.

The Premise:

No other phenomenon was quite so responsible for moving Ravi Varma’s images forward as the printing of oleographs that transferred the likeness of his paintings onto an altogether different medium. The oleographs accelerated the decimation of his images and propelled them forward. They were also responsible for the conversion of his imagery into other visual mediums, each adapting his representations to suit its specific stylistic and technical demands.

The well-known pioneer of Indian cinema, Dadasaheb Phalke (1870 – 1944), was one of the artists working at the Ravi Varma Fine Arts Lithographic Press before departing for Germany to study the latest printing techniques and cinematography. His vision was not dissimilar to Ravi Varma’s, having also witnessed from childhood the theatre of his village near Nasik with its mythological themes that were so closely connected with the images he subsequently saw in the Press. Such representations were as essential for him as Ravi Varma, making him transport these themes into cinema in order to inspire the nationalistic “sons of India” seeking a free and independent nations.

The medium of cinema that came to India after Ravi Varma’s death was first used effectively by Phalke, and demonstrated the emerging sophistication of industrial technology, far greater and in no measure to be compared to the machinery used for the printing of oleographs. These prints depicting sacred and social themes had found a resonance with Indians by providing them a religious and nationalistic identity, so desired under alien rule.

Phalke’s mythological films not only reinforced this need but also introduced entertainment as a unique element. Spectators were mesmerized by the extraordinary special effects, images that were no longer stationary and which accompanied a familiar mythological story, all made through a wholly unexpected medium.

The impact created by Ravi Varma’s imagery, which was initiated by Phalke, gained momentum over the decades, through cinema. Such has been the power and the impact of Ravi Varma’s work and the image that remained in people’s mind and subconscious, giving way to newer and more technologically advanced forms of expression.

About The Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation

The Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation was established in 2015 to uphold the values and traditional expressions which the great artist sought to promote and delineate through his works, a rich cultural heritage that is not confined within geographical borders of just our country but the world in general. The Foundation is the brainchild of his great great granddaughter Princess Bharani Thirunal Rukmini Bayi Thampuran of Travancore State, Gitanjali Maini, art connoisseur, promoter and curator and Jay Varma, an artist extraordinaire who is carrying on the rich legacy of academic art.