YUSUF ARAKKAL

Yusuf Arakkal was born in Kerala in 1945.  He studied painting at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishat College of Arts in Bangalore and print-making at the National Academy Studios, Garhi in New Delhi.  He won the National Award in 1983 and a special award at the III Asian Art Biennale, in Bangladesh in 1986.  Yusuf has had 30 solo shows and also participated in many international shows such as Sao Paulo Biennale, III Asian Art Show, Fukuoka, Inaugural show of the Seoul National Museum of Modern Art and the VI International Triennale, India. He is the recipient of the Silver Medal for Painting at the Venice Biennale in 2004. His solo shows were also held in New York, London, Paris, Nepal, Hong Kong and Singapore. He has traveled extensively, wrote poetry, was an accomplished muralist and sculptor, and had published articles on art. “We first met Yusuf soon after we started Crimson in the mid 1980’s. Our association blossomed and Crimson curated and exhibited his art several times. He was a great friend and an even greater artist. Yusuf used to say ‘time will tell how good or bad an artist is’. We were proud to have nurtured him early in his artistic career. This painting is a part of ‘A tribute to Yusuf Arakkal’ and is our way of saying we love you still Yusuf,” says Silloo & Naozar Daruwalla, gallerists for Yusuf during his early years. Later, his wife Sara through her ‘Sara Arakkal   Gallerie’ gave his a permanent platform to show case his work. It was also instrumental in providing the same platform to many a budding artist of Bangalore.   I quote extensively from a book ‘The man and the Artist’ written by P. Sudhakaran and published by Lalit Kala Academi, New Delhi that is to be launched concurrently along with this exhibition ‘A Tribute.’ Through an extensive series of interviews the author gets Yusuf to open up about his life and his work.  At the age of seven, Yusuf ran away from his princely home in Kerala after his parents passed away and arrived with dreams to an uncertain future in Bangalore. “It must have been true that it is the solitude, or if I put it right, my loneliness after the demise of my parents, that drove me to run away. That loneliness still haunts me. Though I try to hide it all the time and I am successful in that too, it becomes the starting point for many of my creations. ” said the artist years later. “Material life always makes its onslaught on my creativity, and I keep on resisting it. The easiest way for me was not to become an artist. Still I became one. The creative energy within me comes from the past experiences that I have left behind.”   There is a pervading darkness in Yusuf Arakkal’s paintings. Yusuf plays with textural tones, dense shadows and unexpected brightness in all his work. He uses deep blues and browns to infuse his figures with his empathy for them.   Yusuf constantly searched for light, for hope just as the child in him did those decades ago. His love for Rembrandt’s art kept him on the path to self-discovery. Proud to have been a self made artist due to the sheer dint of his efforts. Yusuf was a prolific painter. I was always surprised that he was able to get up each day at the break of dawn and cast aside the darkness in his painting, which he would complete before sitting down to a breakfast. His ebullient, jovial and happy attitude was a counter-point to his paintings. But as the years went by he preferred his solitude at his own home. Again as a counterpoint to that was his love for travel, which to him was always an exercise in storing experiences, that later poured out onto the canvas. This artist excelled in painting social realities unnervingly without ever forcing it on to his painted surface. His love for engineering that he had picked up during his stint at HAL stood by him as he created several murals and sculptures in steel, copper, wood and terracotta. And he really enjoyed that activity that took him outside the comfort zone of his studio and into a mechanics warehouse or a potter’s barn. He passed away in Bangalore in 2016.