Adam Shapiro was 19 years old when he first felt a desire to ‘leave his native place’. His effortless lapse into that phrase, ‘native place’, a desi classic, simply shows how deep Indian roots have grown. Now, Hampi is home – Shapiro lives in Anegundi village with his wife and fellow artist, Shama Pawar. Saturday will mark the opening of his first ever show in Bengaluru – Shapiro, a prolific worker, has shown across the world, Delhi and Mumbai included, although it’s a first here in the city. His story, however, begins when he was 19 and on the lookout for a place that was both remote and beautiful. He arrived in Hydra, Greece, where he would spend the next two decades.
As the years went by, Shapiro divided his time between Greece and Canada, spending 18 months on the island and going home for six. “My brother was a carpenter, doing quite well, so I would pitch in with him,” he recalls. He was sure of one thing: he didn’t want a nine-to-five life. Instead, he made ends meet with a series of odd jobs, “from carpentry to painting house, anything that would use my skills,” he said. In 1980, he made his first trip to the East, a short hiatus from the life he had built in the Mediterranean. He would go on to find love with an Indian woman nine years later but even this would unfold in Greece.
Like Richard Geesink, who first arrived in Hampi in the 70s and subsequently settled there, Shapiro landed up in the mid nineties and set up home in Anegundi village. In Anegundi, he spends time in the garden – orchards with lemon and mango trees. He lives in Bengaluru with his daughter, however, who goes to school here. His wife, Pawar is the founder of the Kishkinda Trust which helps the villagers of Anegundi at a grassroots level. The duo have worked closely with the Archeological Survey of India and carried out several face-lift programmes there. They also run homestead style cottages as well as an expansive garden. Shapiro likes to spend time in the garden with orchards of lemon and mango trees. Hands on parenting - he currently lives in Bengaluru with his school going daughter - gardening and the extensive travelling has in a way evolved his composition.
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As an artist, Shapiro calls his life and surroundings as inspirations, the latter offering him diverse and colourful vistas. And with an almost nomadic style existence, where Hampi, Hydra and Montreal are all ‘home’, it seems like what he sees reflects onto his canvas. The colour palette of each place is strikingly different. “Hampi is about red, green and brown,”” he said in an interview ahead of his solo show Unframed showcasing an oeuvre clearly inspired from his surroundings. Greece, according to him is awashed with blues, whites and greys. Clearly, that’s how an artist would look at the world - in colour. It is also the reason why Shapiro why fled from a possible future of a ‘9 to 5’ job, a possibility he says was “impossible for me.”
He had begun painting in Hydra, “At the time, I was doing landscapes – the light, the moment, the conversations between the elements. It wasn’t easy!” Inspired greatly by the post-impressionist master Paul Cezanne, his own works would take on a similar airy quality, where that which is seen meets all that is perceived. On a most opportune trip to the United States, he heard that a Paul Cezanne exhibition was taking place in Philadelphia and he headed there at once. “His work did something to me that nobody else’s work could manage. Paul was an unhappy man but his work shines. There’s an energy present in his work that goes beyond the physical.”
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The show has been curated by Shraddha Nair who writes in her curatorial note: ‘Shapiro takes us into his world and shows us frames of stillness from his life, a feeling he travelled far and wide to experience. Through his works we see more of his search for this timelessness, each canvas a memoir of a blissful moment found.” The show, at Gallery Time and Space, is a retrospective of sorts, he explains – it contains work he did back in Greece. “I had all these paintings stored away in Hampi and I brought them here to take another look. That was an interesting process – my works are never complete, I’m still touching them up!”
However, Shapiro’s talent is witnessed in his portraits and still life. Portraits of his daughter and still life of tableaus depicting shelves, tables and empty rooms suggesting that life is right at the corner- these are clearly evocative and somehow unique. The abstracts came later, although traces of abstractionism do exist in his earlier works too, he says. “It started by chance, as a commissioned work. It became a dialogue between myself and the canvas, the line was a point and a counterpoint.” These are the roots of the exhibition’s title, Unframed. “Most of my works were unframed, that’s one part of it. There is also a reference to my abstracts – they’re objects in themselves, not really something to be framed. Of course, you can if you want to – put them in a frame!”
Over the past forty years, Shapiro’s paintings have been shown in galleries in France, Germany, and Greece. In India, he counts his shows at Mumbai, both at Jehangir Gallery and Taj Art Gallery. “But this is the first time I will be showing my abstracts here,” he said. It would be a good idea to view Shapiro’s works in close quarters in order to experience the locales of two lands which have nothing in common except for the artist who lives like a local there.
(With inputs from Darshana Ramdev)
What: Unframed
When: February 23rd to March 4th
Where: Gallery Time and Space, 11am - 7pm
