Birth Centenary Year of Gaitonde!

Legendary painter Gaitonde’s birth centenary year starts today. After realizing that no government, the state or the central would take any initiative to celebrate it, ‘Chinha’ has decided to celebrate this momentous occasion in its own way. On this occasion, ‘Chinha’ will publish an international edition of the book ‘Gaitonde’ and we will remember the great artist every week in a special section on our website as well as our social media handles.

Today is November 2, 2023. Painter Vasudev Santu Gaitonde was born on this day exactly 99 years ago, i.e. on November 2, 1924 at Nagpur in Maharashtra. And so, the coming year should be considered as the Birth Centenary year of Gaitonde. But, we have a strange situation here, instead of celebrating the day spontaneously, it is not likely to be remembered at all, leave alone celebrating it. Next year will be the Lok Sabha elections in India. As I am writing this, the bugle for elections has already been sounded in five states where the Assembly elections are to be held. Therefore, the entire atmosphere in the media is that of elections only. In such situation, who would give a damn to Gaitonde or anything else. That is why I have no hope that the ‘Gaitonde birth centenary’ will be celebrated at the government level.

Of course, I know I am a nobody. I started following Gaitonde from 1974-75 after being overwhelmed by his extraordinary life and his paintings. It was a very different time. If one wanted to know something about someone, it could be only through books, newspapers and magazines. An effective medium like the Internet, in which we live today, was yet to be discovered. Obviously, if information was to be collected, it was only through printed material. There was no other medium available. It was during such times, I collected every paper, every picture that I came across about painter Gaitonde, which in course of time became a very large and valuable collection.

In fact, I have been documenting many great Indian painters and not just Gaitonde. But, of all of them Gaitonde has been my most favorite painter and so I am mentioning him here. I compiled this collection of works of Gaitonde and published three special issues of Art Annual ‘Chinha’ on Gaitonde in years 2001, 2006, and 2007. Even after providing all the reference material for Gaitonde’s biography, no publisher or gallery has to date come forward to publish a book on him and hence, I published a special Marathi edition on Gaitonde in 2016. This book was widely appreciated and was very popular. But it has been seven years now.

Even after 23 years of Gaitonde’s death, not a single book with all the ‘authentic information’ about him has been published in English language. Looking at this sad scenario, ‘Chinha’ has decided publish the English translation of its Marathi edition on Gaitonde next year i.e. 2024, to mark his birth centenary.

Nobody seems to care about revisiting the works of Gaitonde, especially on his birth centenary. Neither his native state Goa, nor Maharashtra, the state where he lived for 40-42 years and made a name for himself as a painter, nor Delhi the state where he spent the rest of his life, nor the Central government who conferred upon him Padma Shri at the age of 52 or 53 has thought about celebrating ‘birth centenary’ of Gaitonde. When I realized this, about a year ago, I approached the Maharashtra as well as the Central Government and requested them to observe the year 2024 as the ‘Gaitonde Birth Centenary’ year, but my requests were ignored.

Finally, I decided that we should celebrate his ‘birth centenary’ year by publishing the English translation of the original Marathi book ‘Gaitonde’. Mine or ‘Chinha’s reach is limited and so we have restrained ourselves to publishing this book and circulating posts related to Gaitonde on Chinha’s website and social media every week.

Today is November 2, 2023. We start our activities regarding this today. This initiative will continue till November 2, 2024. I assure you, we will see you every week from now on.

Satish Naik

Editor,

‘Chinha Art News’