The jeep that the young, bright artist drove was a familiar sight outside Safina Plaza, back in the 1990s. Having just quit his job at HAL, Yusuf Arakkal would drive to what was the city's only art gallery at the time, to "hang around" with his friends, Naozar and Silloo Daruwalla. It was a fortuitous meeting - back in 1982, Naozar spotted a painting of a woman in blue, hanging at a restaurant near HAL airport. It belonged to an artist whose name he hadn't heard at the time - Yusuf Arakkal.
A few days later, they ran into each other at an exhibition, where Naozar approached Arakkal. The artist was happy to be told of the painting, he remembered at that point that it was just a loan! True to his word, he brought it back home and this time, offered it to his friend, Naozar. "It was the first Yusuf Arakkal we bought," says Silloo Daruwalla, owner, Crimson - The Art Resource, an evening before the opening of A Tribute to Yusuf Arakkal.
24 works including paintings, drawings and sculptures, a smattering from the many series that spanned a prolific career, will be part of the show on Cunningham Road. "It's a tribute to a friend, no Yusuf was family," Silloo smiles. "He was a great friend and an even greater artist."
Yusuf Arakkal portrait
How does one sum up the life and works of an artist who is arguably one of the greatest of our time? Anybody who tries, finds themselves, sooner or later, at something of a loss - the maverick genius is simply too hard to contain. Arakkal, does it himself, however. Solitude is a recurring theme, a notion with which friends and biographers alike will confer. Yusuf would often recall spending long evenings on the beach as a boy, drowning his sorrows in the setting sun. That was his moment of divine communion - "I wanted to bring those colours to life on canvas, I knew, even at that young age."
Yusuf Arakkal's gregarious nature greatly belied the turmoil that seeped into his works - "The loneliness till haunts me. Though I try to hide it all the time and I am successful in doing so, it becomes the starting point for many of my creations," he said to Silloo. "Material life always makes its onslaught on my creativity and I keep on resisting it. My creative energy comes from the experiences I have left behind." This instilled in him a sense of spiritual solitude and it was no wonder, really, that he drew greatly from the works of Kamala Das, Ernest Hemingway and his favourite - Vaikom Basheer.
It's wonderfully apt, then, that P. Sudharakaran's first attempt to capture Yusuf Arakkal's life was titled In Solitude. "It was a title we arrived at together, it meant a great deal to him. He always used it in a spiritual sense, to him it did not mean alone-ness or reclusivity or withdrawing from the outside world in any way," says Sudhakaran, whose book, The Man and the Artist, a biography of Yusuf Arakkal published by the Lalit Kala Akademi, will be launched at the exhibition this evening.
Sudhakaran's decades-long friendship with Yusuf Arakkal began when he was a freelance writer in Kerala. "After I wrote my first article about him, he told me I should consider writing more," he says. Five years later, they met again and Yusuf re-emphasised his opinion. It was the start of a long, fruitful friendship - Sudhakaran was always among the first to hear of a new idea or witness Yusuf's plans grow into works of art. The Ganga series, done in recollection in the United States after a visit Yusuf had made to Varanasi, finds mention in Sudharakaran's book, which focuses on the latter half of the artist's life.
Despite his association with the artist, Sudhakaran's words are marked by humility and an admiration for his muse that he does not attempt to hide. "I never had academic training in art criticism, I never studied art history," he says. That fascinated Yusuf - "He would say that I used my intuition and that was what he wanted." In Solitude was launched back in 2009, with help from a few critics, Sudhakaran adds.
"The Ganga series was a turning piont for him, it thew open a world of possibilities for him as an artist. It marked a transition from one state to another," says Sudhakaran. Yusuf's extensive series of nudes also finds mention here - "He wanted me to write a book on his experiences with the nude models, we would have long discussions on that as well," he says. There's a chapter on the Christ Series, a later project and one he always held dear. "He also wanted to do a series on Krishna - he saw them not as Gods but as human beings who loved humanity completely," he says. "I am writing of a dear friend - it was difficult because he was so enthused by his work. He would go from one project to the next without a pause. He only achieved half of what he wanted, in that sense, my book will never really be complete."
What: A Tribute to Yusuf Arakkal and launch of Yusuf Arakkal: The Man and the Artist
When: Feb 23 to March 22
Where: Crimson, Hatworks Boulevard, Cunningham Road
