The Delhi-based designer shares nds from Salone del Mobile — from lamps woven with PET bottles and Ghanaian grass to deconstructed furniture
At Dimorecentrale, the new multi-purpose space by Dimorestudio — one of Europe’s most in-demand design companies — there were a number of stunning exhibits. From Bonacina 1889’s rattan furniture to French fashion maison Yves Salomon’s debut furniture collection, in collaboration with Chapo Création. But Dimorestudio’s co-founder Emiliano Salci’s ‘Limited Edition’ stood out. For the seven-piece collection, the Italian designer revived and contemporarised classic pieces from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Think a chest of drawers with an organ (keyboard) shaped backrest in veneered boxwood or a lacquered wood sideboard with the base in brushed steel. All the pieces were deconstructed and reassembled, with modern accessories and lacquers in brass, gold and steel. Each piece came personally signed by Salci.
During my visit to the Kolkata Centre for Creativity (KCC), a day after the opening of K.G. Subramanyan’s retrospective at Emami Art, I hear several stories about the renowned artist. Mani da, as he was a¥ectionately known, “had a sweet tooth”, says Chaiti Nath, a programme executive at KCC. “A colleague used to bake cakes for him every weekend in Shantiniketan. Even though I only met him when he was already ‘KG’ [shortened from Kalpathi Ganpathi], and he would come for lectures surrounded by people, he was always nice to me. He even did a quick sketch in my notebook once.”
Subramanyan, it seems, gave away his art to everyone — many of those who studied in Shantiniketan or visited the institution had received works from him. “Even then, there was enough artwork for so many retrospectives [like this one
Milan is always exciting, as Italy’s historic heart of design, manufacturing and fashion. But it is especially so during the week of Salone del Mobile. Every April, the annual furniture fair sees the streets over owing as thousands of makers, curators, and buyers convene for a week’s worth of inspiration, conversation, antipasti and aperitivi. In fact, 2024 had a record-breaking 3.5 lakh plus people attend, to see over 1,950 exhibitors from 35 countries.
I always prefer to arrive on Sunday, to wander the fair before the crowds nd it. It is when the locals come as well. This year there were more people from outside the design fraternity joining the throng, with hour-long queues at events such as the annual installation by Milanese rm to mark the Kerala-born Tamil Brahmin’s centenary birth anniversary],” adds Nath. Another person tells me that the late artist, who passed away in 2016, had a caustic sense of humour.
I seem to nd mentions of KG everywhere I turn in Kolkata. Serendipitously, there are references to him even in Holding Time Captive, the biography of theatre persona and art collector Ebrahim Alkazi that I’m engrossed in. This comes as a surprise because I associate Alkazi with the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group and KG had his roots rmly in Shantiniketan and folk arts such as patachitra. They seem miles away from each other, but a Kolkata friend tells me that Alkazi helped KG travel to England as a Fellow at the prestigious St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, in the 1980s.
Painter, activist, teacher
KG experimented with a range of materials as well as themes. Over
Dimorestudio and the launch of French luxury brand Hermès’ interiors collection. It spilled over to the satellite fair Alcova’s takeover of Villa Borsani, Modernist architect Osvaldo Borsani’s former home, and the 19th-century Villa Bagatti Valsecchi, too. A 45-minute drive away, it featured 80 exhibitors from 27 countries.
There were several trends to be noted, across Salone and Fuorisalone (the series of fringe events and installations across the city held at the same time): innovative tables were ubiquitous, as were interesting vessels and table toppers. But the dominant one was the collaborations between luxury fashion maisons and designers — from Bottega Veneta X Le Corbusier Foundation to Yves Saint Laurent X Gio Ponti archive.
There was a strong spotlight on India, too. Jaipur Rugs celebrated the Indo-Italian connection through three the 70-odd years of his career, he was a painter, printmaker, author, toy maker, muralist, and relief sculptor who made signicant contributions to institutions such as the All-India Handloom Board and the World Craft Council Board. He remained an activist, institution builder, and teacher till the end of his life both at Shantiniketan and Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU) in Baroda.
This exhibition, One Hundred Years and Counting: Re-Scripting KG Subramanyan — which has over 200 works curated by cultural theorist Nancy Adajania from the collections of Seagull Foundation, MSU, and Asia Art Archive — looks at KG’s large repository of work. As Adajania explains, this includes his “early paintings from the 1950s; iconic reverse paintings on acrylic, which look like polychrome stained glass windows; marker pen works on paper; postcard-size drawings from his visit to China; and toys made for the ne arts fairs”. It also collabs: monochrome carpets with Chanel-owned yarn atelier Vimar 1991; a geometric series by Italian architect Michele De Lucchi; and Zig Zag, a collection of abstract designs by studio DAAA Haus. Vikram Goyal Studio had its second showcase at Nilufar Gallery — a series of limited-edition furniture (consoles and benches) and lighting xtures (chandeliers and wall sconces) handcrafted by Indian artisans who specialise in heritage metalwork techniques.
Here are a few exhibits that impressed, as I walked around Milan, with its gothic and neoclassical buildings steeped in stories playing backdrop to contemporary design.
The writer is based in New Delhi, and has spent two decades re ning a contemporary design language within the international collectible design market.
(Clockwise from above) The Reaper; reverse paintings on acrylic at Emami Art; K.G. Subramanyan preparing for a puppet show in 1968; toys made by the artist.
The ‘Time Traveller’ exhibition, spread across the gallery’s two venues, was a complex exploration of the story of design and its evolution. Among founder Nina Yasher’s curation, Italian designers Andrea Mancuso and Christian Pellizzari made an impression. Mancuso’s pieces evoked the artist’s process — where abstract lines, doodles and concepts gradually take shape. His solo show, titled Pentimenti, was divided into three: Sgraito (marble tables and chandeliers), Strata (coee tables and vases) and Stria (centrepieces). With the creative use of materials such as marble, glass and bronze, the collection was an excavation of craft-driven techniques and novel material applications. Meanwhile, Pellizzari had an arresting display of red chandeliers and lightworks made with Murano glass. The story goes that the designer encountered vast bushes of Brugmansia (a plant with pendulous flowers) on a morning stroll and then envisioned the shapes recreated in Murano glass. His inspiration from Venice and Muranese art was visible in each piece.
For its eighth, and most ambitious, exhibition at Salone, the Spanish luxury house commissioned 24 internationally renowned artists and designers to create lamps — using materials and styles of their own choosing. Some remarkable pieces ensued, ranging from the rustic to the futuristic. Standouts included Canadian multi-disciplinary artist Anne Low’s ‘Fir Candle’, made with brass and hand-dyed and handwoven silk; U.K.-based ceramist Akiko Hirai’s ‘Mangetsu to Mikazuki’, a standing lamp in a weathered metal canister holding askew birch twigs (pictured); and Japanese bamboo artist Hafu Matsumoto’s homage to Loewe’s famous Puzzle and Hammock bags, with an interwoven lamp. has never-seen archival material such as handcrafted mock-ups of his children’s books and preparatory sketches for murals. The maquettes of his nal mural, the massive 2.7 x 10.9-metre, black-and-white acrylic on canvas called The War of the Relics (2013), which uses motifs from myth and contemporary culture to show the medieval mindset of human confrontation, are stunning. KG was 88 and had just had major surgery when he decided to make the huge piece.
Telling it like it is
But KG’s activist mindset didn’t just extend to the grandiose. My favourite part of the exhibition is a children’s book that is a thinly
Talking Face. explores his ideological a°nity with Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Rabindranath Tagore, who have “all been neutralised as icons, emptied of content or vilied”. As she puts it, it is interesting to see a resurgence of the legacy of “arguably the most popular and relevant artist and teacher of independent India” through exhibitions across Mumbai, Vadodra and Kolkata, when the legacy of his peers is being extinguished.
Till June 21 at Emami Art, Kolkata
Centre for Creativity.
The writer is an expert on South Asian art and culture.