“Look How the Light Moves”:
Lessons from Nasreen
Nasreen Mohamedi’s linework is famed for its unique beauty and careful construction. But what can we say about the artist as a teacher, mentor and friend?
Nasreen Mohamedi’s minimalist forms are unique for the paradoxes they defy. Her line drawings — rendered in combinations of ink, graphite and gouache — are soulful, rather than sterile. In spite of their structural integrity, they appear weightless.
Mohamedi drew inspiration from her extensive travels around Asia and the Middle East. Her exposure to Islamic architecture, Sufism, Zen Buddhism, textile weaving and calligraphy gave significant direction to her work. She combined these influences with poetic economy, obtaining, as she wrote in her diaries, “the maximum of the minimum”. Remarkably, even after the onset of a rare neurological and motor disorder called Huntington’s Chorea, Mohamedi managed to continue working. She spent her final years experimenting further with dimension, line and shape.
And yet, important aspects of Mohamedi’s life have been overshadowed by her work as an artist: that of the roles she played as an educator and friend to many other members of her artistic community. Her classes were attended by the women who were to become India’s next generation of artists. She enthralled her acquaintances and she kept her loved ones dear to her heart. Here, we listen to the stories of some of her closest students, friends, colleagues and admirers.
Nilima Sheikh, Artist & Teacher
“I first met Nasreen Mohamedi at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (MSU) where I was studying painting. She was visiting for a seminar held at the Faculty of Fine Arts. I remember how she had a distinct aura of kindness. She was also very charming and sophisticated, with the ability to make whomever she spoke to feel totally at ease.
I got to know her better when she had moved from Bombay to live in Delhi, not too far from where my parents lived. Our friendship grew. Eventually, she left Delhi to move to Baroda, where she had been offered a role as a teacher at MSU — the very same place that we had met all those years ago! I was married by this time and had my first child. She became a favoured aunt to my daughter, and to me, she was inspirational role model and close confidante. When I came to teach at MSU myself, we worked in tandem in a shared preparatory studio. She taught drawing and I was learning to teach design.
I was struck by just how magnetic her students found her. They were compelled by her pedagogy. Her classes were far removed from the dull academic lessons that she must have recieved as a student. I, too, learned so much from her.”
Gulammohammed Sheikh, Artist & Teacher
“My first acquaintance with Nasreen was through her abstract paintings, exhibited at Gallery 59 in Bombay. It was a real artists’ hub that I used to frequent on my trips to the city, where I would visit the studios of M.F. Husain, V.S. Gaitonde, Tyeb Mehta and other artists. Nasreen also had a space there. I can’t remember if I actually met her on that occasion, but I was definitely aware of an air of mystery that surrounded her at the time. Everyone was always vying to be friends with her, which was tricky, as she was quite shy.
It wasn’t until she came to live in Delhi in 1967 that we became friends. Her barsati or terrace apartment was visited by many of Delhi’s creatives. I knew that the celebrated dancer Yamini Krishnamurthy and Hindi poet Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena would often go to see her.
One of my favourite memories of Nasreen was from the summer of 1970, when the Smithsonian Institute organised a printmaking workshop in Delhi, which Nasreen and I, as well as Jyoti Bhatt, Bhupen Khakhar and P.D. Dhumal attended. My wife Nilima was also in Delhi and her father provided us with his car for a trip to Fatehpur Sikri that we had planned to visit after. It was in the midday sun when Nasreen and I jumped out into the scorching heat to photograph the amazing architecture. She, I believe, had a Nikon and I had my Asahi Pentax K2. Moving around the site, we both caught the burning light of Sikri and its striking shadows. In our respective journeys as artists, I put Sikri aside. She, on the other hand, chased the sharp geometry of those linear,
architectural structures for the rest of her life.”
Shrilekha Sikander, Artist
“Nasreen and I met in 1972, when she joined the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda. By then, I was already in my second year, specialising in painting. There weren’t too many women teachers around at the time so it was wonderful to have her there.
She never taught me, but I went to speak to her anyway. She was so approachable, patient and understanding that it was common for students to go and chat to her about any problems relating to their work or personal life.
After finishing my degree, and before returning to my home in Kolhapur, I had gone to see Nasreen for what I thought was the last time. It was there that I met her nephew Nisar, whom I would later marry. I never thought that I would become a part of her family! Her whole clan was warm and welcoming just like her. It was amazing to feel so at home among such a wonderful group of people.”
“She was so approachable, patient and understanding that it was common for students to go and chat to her about any problems relating to their work or personal life.”
Mortimer Chatterjee & Tara Lal, Gallery Directors
“We never had the chance to meet Nasreen Mohamedi. She passed away a good decade before we came across her practice in the year 2000. Ever since we have been collecting her material, we have felt a deep connection with the human that lay behind the practice.
With Nasreen, art was an extension of a personal philosophy that gave meaning to her existence. By the 1980s, she had reached a visual vocabulary whose austerity, often made up of little more than a sequence of precisely deployed lines, is often misunderstood as being divorced from the world of things, people and objects. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
It is clear to us that in Nasreen’s work, we find a person who was fascinated by the inner forces that animate the world around us. Looking at a Nasreen Mohamedi artwork can attune a viewer to the patterns and rhythms of the
natural world.”
Manisha Parekh, Artist
“Nasreen Mohamedi was my teacher. In my first year, she led a class on object drawing. We were made to draw an arrangement of objects at the centre of the room, which could be anything from junkyard objects to a simple grouping of eggs. She used to tell us: ‘decide carefully if you want the drawing to be vertical or horizontal’. She was always thinking about arrangement and the space of the page, getting us to understand concepts of positive
and negative space.
She often used to make us go out to observe and draw trees. A tree is not static and keeps moving, she would remind us, so we had to learn how to capture that motion. What I loved about her as a teacher is that she could speak in a simple language. No jargon whatsoever. She spoke in terms of seeing, observing and translating onto the paper. She would say: ‘look how the light moves,concentrate on it…try to bring to life what you see in the tree’. A lot of it was about feeling, which we could all relate to.
I remember going to her home on many occasions. She had designed her own house; it was beautiful and minimal and zen. The whole place was very well-organised and spotlessly clean. She was obsessed with mopping her floors twice a day. There was always wonderful Hindustani music in the background, mostly by Bhimsen Joshi.
I visited her more and more as her health deteriorated. Students kept coming to the house to give her company. She passed away in 1990, when I was in my third year of college. I wish she had been able to see the influence that she had on me as an artist.”
Neela Bhagwat, Hindustani Classical Musician
“Nasreen and I met on a moving bus in Bombay. We had been at a party the night before. She had heard me singing, and I had seen her, but we hadn’t spoken. ‘I liked your singing very much, Neela. Do you teach singing?’, she asked, that day on the bus. I told her I did, and she was very keen for me to come and teach her sister. The next day, I arrived at her sister Kamar’s house, where I started to give regular singing lessons. This became a way for me to get to know Nasreen better.
Rarely did she outwardly show her concern for me. I remember how she scolded me for cutting my hair very short. She completely disapproved of it! This was typical of Nasreen — always taking care of those around her, but never holding back on honesty. She was also very spontaneous. She once called me as she arrived in Bombay from Baroda. ‘I am coming to you Neela… sing for me,’ she said. She arrived shortly and lay down on a mattress as I started singing and playing my tanpura.
The link between us was our work. I sang and she painted yet words were not necessary to convey what flowed between us. I wrote a poem on her works, which I later transformed into a slow-tempo khayal. In April 1990, I performed this piece at an arts festival held at Gallery Chemould in Bombay. She came up to me after I had finished singing to praise me for my performance. I didn’t know she had been present. Could I have had the courage to sing about her work if I had seen her there? That was in April 1990. She passed away just a month later, on the 14th of May.”
Born in 1937, Nasreen Mohamedi was best known for her line-based drawings, and is today considered one of the most imporant modern artists from India.
*Published in India Art Fair Magazine, January 2020
