Six decades before it became the muse of a cleanliness-seeking lawyer, Versova beach was the favoured haunt of a fenugreek seeking artist. In the mid-1960s, perpetually-paintcarrying, Europe-trained contemporary artist K K Hebbar would visit the beach often with his family to buy locally-grown fenugreek leaves.
On one such occasion, even as fishermen were drying fish around him, a German woman saw the JJ School of Art protege quickly etch the mostly-blue-sky-and-yellow-sand landscape on the back of a Lalit Kala Akademi invitation card. This spontaneous drawing led to an untitled 1965 canvas which is now among over 80 prized Indian artworks belonging to German octogenarian Ute Rettberg, that are being sold at a Sotheby's London auction.
Abstractionist Ambadas Khobragade's untitled work are among over 80 Indian exhibits
Spanning Madhubani to Neo-Tantric art, the exhibition--which is on until May 31--includes over-five-decades-old Indian drawings, printworks and sculptures amassed by Rettberg, who had come to Bombay in the mid-1960s as one of the first women in the German Consulate General and who--on leaving it in the 1970s--would become one of the first foreign gallerists to expand the international market for Indian art for nearly a decade.
Ute and her husband, Rolf, were newlyweds when the walls of their Juhu home started filling up with the flamboyant brushstrokes of talented local artists in the grip of the many social, political and cultural churnings of post-Independence India after the German couple found itself drawn to the rebellious, formless splashes of colour. 'The Closed Membranes of Silence'--an abstract work painted by colour and form pioneer Ambadas Khobragade, who was born in Akola and who passed out of JJ School of Art in 1952--was Ute's first acquisition.
In 1973, after the Rettbergs returned to their home in Freinsheim near Frankfurt, Ute opened Surya Galerie, which aroused great interest as the first of its kind in Europe to represent the colourful, diverse works of contemporary Indian artists.
Soon, Kekoo Gandhy, founder of Mumbai's Chemould Gallery, began to send works of artists such as 1939-born Ila Pal to show in the German gallery for almost two years after which Ute began to acquire artworks directly from the Indian artists, forging lasting friendships with the likes of Satish Panchal, Surya Prakash, Devayani and Kanwal Krishna, some of whom would stay with her in Freinsheim for months at a time, showing their works in solo and group shows at the gallery.
Between 1973 and 1981, when Surya Galerie ran almost 50 shows before closing shop, Khobragade--recognised by influential New York art critic, Clement Greenberg as an important Indian modern artist--remained the German gallery's highest-selling artist.
Today, going through black-and-white photos from the heady time--one of which shows the striking, shorthaired Ute nursing a drink with her gaze pensively distant while engrossed in a conversation with Hebbar and his daughter Rekha Rao--triggers surprise more than nostalgia in the former diplomat because of ". . how young I looked, that I dared to do all this". "But I was so convinced about the value and that Indian art is equal to all others and that somebody had to show it," says Ute, who credits Hebbar for having sharpened her "eye and feeling for quality, for good craftsmanship and genuine forms of expression. ”
Among other highlights of the Sotheby's lot are significant works from the Neo-tantric movement that was born in 1960s India at the hands of the likes of Biren De and Mahirwan Mamtani as well as mezzotint and screenprint works of diverse printmakers such as Shail Choyal and Jyoti Bhatt. The title of the exhibition in which Rettberg parts with colours that have surrounded her for over 50 years, isn't abstract: 'The Surya Collection: Property from Mrs Ute Rettberg'.
