P.N.CHOYAL
  ( born  1924 )

  One of the living legends of the Contemporary Art world, and a close contemporary of the early Indian Modernists of the 1940’s, Choyal was against any wholesale borrowing from his illustrious forerunners. Unlike the first generation Modernists, he never rejected the essentially lyrical content in the romantic version of the past, nor did he break down the female figure in angry haste and bitterness.
  Born in Rajasthan, this 82 yr old veteran artist has had a long and chequered carreer. He had travelled the length and breadth of the country and studied art at the Slade School, London, prior to which he had taken Fine Art Diploma from the School of Arts and Crafts, Jaipur and his Diploma in Painting from Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai.

  From the mid  fifties onwards the artist discovered the elated brushwork of the Impressionists and left behind the Bengal School’s wash techniques. While in England, Choyal tasted the irresistible charm of pure abstraction and the bouncing joy of gestural brushwork in oil. His paintings of the late seventies till nineties bear this out where from his paintings, emerged the amazing transformation of the human figure, particularly that of a woman, reflecting his impressive sensitivity as a compassionate painter.
  The magic visions of Rajasthan which were embedded in his mind slowly receded and he got involved in the tensions and struggle if the people, whose economic life was as much in ruin as the heritage of the land. The entire gamut of emotions found their way on his canvasses through the human form. His figures are uneasy spectators to the conflicts and strife around them. His human figures are symbols of pain and agony. They are projections of the dehumanized society suffering unbearable dignity and shame.

  Choyal believes that at the time of his creative activity, and artist must act as his inner necessity directs.  He says ' Art is strength of ideas, not material'.  The idea is the form. After the conception any form of communication -- pictorial, diagrammatic, symbolic or verbal should be expressive of the idea, only then it deserves to be called as a legitimate specimen of art.
  Quoting knobbler he points out " A work of art can be described as the product of man which has a defined form or order and communicates human experience....  Art is affected by the skilled control of the materials used in its formation to project the formal and the communicative concepts that the artist wishes to present". 

  His work finds its most profound expression in the ascetic he evolves that vacillate between integration and disintegration, which can be described as aclectic Upanishadic thought.  In many of his works we find an indomitable female figure disintegrating in a storm that reminds us that we live in a cultural ethos where death is not an end of life but our continuation of it into the future.

  Parmanand choyal has been deeply involved in emerging ' realities ' : The overcrowded urban centres, the disinherited rural poor moving into towns and cities, the fast decay of human values in day-to-day living, the lost glory of Rajputs of Mewar, all this affected this mature artist and stimulated his essentially Indian sensibilities for pictorial expression.  His portrayal of Decaying Monumental structures in the " Dissolving Past " series, shows the same pathos as they stand desolate and neglected, symbolic of breakdown of human values.  But series on Man, Untitled, The Divide, Man and the horse, Life as such, Woman and Kora Kaghaz reveal a radical change of the scene in the inner world of the artist, for him it has been a long voyage across the tumultuous sea of world of art.

  From many in aspects of his artistic expressions we see him as a profound artist of life.  It is not life anywhere, it is life in Rajasthan which shares a time span with the whole of humanity...  It is a time - span that crawls forward relentlessly through slavery, feudalism and capitalism to a future when the perseverance of the most oppressed and down-trodden, like the woman of his canvasses, helps them achieve liberation.

  DIsturbed by the tortures inflicted on Indian Women he truly portrayed theri trauma and miseries and for a long period. His works showing Desolate Women in their loneliness and Dowry deaths have all been strong social comments -- powerful renderings with a versatile approach. A majority of his works portray the brutality inflicted on women in society, he says " I have been witness to women being physically tortured, thrown out of their houses. I had the unfortunate experience of seeing women being burnt alive and  these are incidents which haunt me and I try to bring out through my work, the angusih suppressed within me."

  Having won numerous awards, exhibited in India & Abroad, done countelss judgements and workshops across the nation, he has not been swayed by success  for he still remains a very humble and sincere soul we all admire....
  A strenght of composition, depth of theme, powerful drawing and charm of design have given immense life to his art which makes him an unequalled master in his genre. His unique vision and liberated perception lend his works and aesthetic quality and authenticity that makes him an institution by himself and will attract generations of art lovers through the passage of time.

 P. N. Choyal

P. N. Choyal (born 1924) is certainly a painter fully aware of the complex development of modern art, what with his stint at the Slade in London. If he has evolved his own style, it is not in deliberate isolation, that is, from either the Eastern or Western traditions. Even so, he has his deepest roots in his native Rajasthan tradition – the tradition in which we have untold styles of miniature painting. He is an artist who has perhaps begun with the observation of figure studies and landscape, but the end result is much farther removed from the naturalistic convention. Though he has always an object in nature to inspire him, in the processes of translation that follow, he evolves a composition in which the object is often no longer recognizable. It would not be true to say that the result is abstract, because the forms that remain in the picture are still recognizably organic. Choyal selects particular aspects in the Rajasthan landscape call it monument scope but having selected his subject it seems to the artist impossible to sit down to a tame imitation of the apparent. The reality is elsewhere, namely, in the painter’s mind. The essence is intellectual and emotional, living as though he were the rich Rajasthan sagas. And so, he seems to express what he feels by paraphrasing what he has observed. His paintings as a whole, therefore, are a transmission of natural as also of the sensational reality of the moment when these facts are first registered on him: everything has to be faithful to be sensational reality. And which is registered on our own consciousness.

In general, the finest of the artist’s work is an interplay of the tone and color sufficiently striking in its own mysterious domain. An attempt to analyze all this would be foolish and delicate. Even so, one can say that the individual colors in his works are nameless, and every large area is not a color but mutation of tone. He introduces subtle variations in these choice compositions. In some works there are moments as if of hot summer days. The desert stillness and the gently vibrating haze in these works gives to our perception a kind of finality, as though we are listening to the hum of minstrel’s one- stringed instrument, recounting the lore of Rajasthan. Arid over here, too, our emotions are sharpened by amazement. Choyal has no intension to flatter humans. Rather he rests out of the human frame, or out of any organic form, images of power and movement, and as of the feel of reality behind appearances. The sense of immediacy comes about with much facility. Here it is possible to praise the expressive brush stroke, the special realism, and even at the moments the psychological penetration. The artists exploits his material well, both thematic and technical. But the style that choyal has developed in the course of the time does not overawe us. It only assists at the birth of the given truth. A good bit of spiritual effort is required to effect an exact transformation of the raw life experience into palpable art; and, at select moments, the painter succeeds in his mission splendidly. Mind you, there is no possibility of improvising works of this caliber. The artist really wills them into being. He identifies with what is presented to his own eyes. He takes this matter in and relates to it completely, without exception. He has based in his paintings, of a wide variety from not only memory or observation of particular objects or places, but also whatever comes up from the general fund of his knowledge of natural forms.

Surely the artist has made himself familiar with the locale of his home state completely, by now. Out of the depth of the sureness of this knowledge he creates compositions, which have the vital rhythm of lived life. Also the vitality in certain of his figuration is an effect of moment of muscles, thus a dynamic quality comes to inform these compositions. To create such vitality in an animate mass is a difficult proposition. This demands no only a good plastic sensibility nut in addition the capacity to redo this same sensibility into objective material forms. Choyal has achieved a respectable degree of integration in such paintings, and these works may be said to be also multi- nuanced, never merely illustrative.

In sum, in this painter, a veteran, we have authenticity because he has successfully absorbed the styles of the west, and then crossed them with the art forms of the place where he has been born. The cross breeding of this nature can be fruitful, if an artist is true to himself, whether those be history based, romantic or of rural nature. The artist has had a rich life, in terms of experience, and much of this experience has found place on his canvass in the contemporary idiom. But if it is contemporary, it is at the same moment outside time. -  KESHAV  MALIK

……….for P.N choyal it has been a long and fruitful journey as a close contemporary of the early Indian modernists of the 40’s- the PAG pf Bombay, the Calcutta group, and those of he Delhi Shilpi Chakra of the post-independence period.

The 21^st century brought him back to his initial, steadfast individuality the individuality that restrained P.N choyal from blindly ‘following’ any labored expression of modernity, or for that matter, any passing vogue of the post modernity. For him it has been a long voyage across the tumultuous sea of the world of art, through the rough weather of ‘internationalism’. He is still discovering new frontiers of the pictorial means by way of techniques that express his renewed vision of palette of fresh colors which will respond to the new cycle of creativity. Essentially an avid reader of literature and poetry, P.N choyal steadily refuses to grow old at 83. -      SANTO DATTA

…….his work, however found his most profound expression in the aesthetics that vacillate between integration and disintegration, which can at best be described as electric upanishadic thought. In many of his later works we find an indomitable female figure disintegrating in a storm that reminds one that we live in a cultural ethos where death is not an end of life but a continuation of it into the future. It is from this aspect of his artistic expression I see him as a profound artist of life. But it is not life anywhere. It is life in Rajasthan/. But it is not a historical life. It shares the time spam with the whole of humanity. It is a tie- spam that crawls forward relentlessly through slavery, feudalism and capitalism to the future when the perseverance of the most oppressed and down- trodden, like the woman of his canvasses, helps them achieve liberation.

True, this liberation is visual enlightenment like the Buddhist concept of nirvana; but in dark times like the last decades or so, even this conception is a ray of hope. An it is an artist of enlightenment, awakening and a grasp over the reality of our times that he will remembered in our contemporary art, swimming confidently in its mainstream and providing inspiration for the future to large number of his students. He will continue to be a beacon of light in times of darkness. That is why his art will never go stale but will continue to inspire in future as it has done in the past and does at present.   -   SUNEET CHOPRA

…….it comes to min that civilization began much before these forts. Now such has been our expansion and growth, that we are unable to contain even these buttresses of our past that do us proud, as an old civilized people! We justify ourselves by blaming and whatever we find, ending with the education system, among various other systems or even the lack of it.

Why did choyal paint his women middle-aged and portly, and slightly time worn, instead of the nubile nymphets that are the most usual choice of artists? Observing the veteran over the span of his career, it is notable that his was a penchant for portraying the second stage of things, be it the woman, the monument, or the urban landscape. For anything to be affected by its people and surroundings, it first has to be manifest with a physical form. What follows is how its circumstances alter it. That is how it is with his monuments and that is how with the women he painted.

He has felt her to be faceless and voiceless, only a protruding belly, and a bare midriff, caught in the inevitability of social mores and time, suffering without a qualm, with a conditioning that was generations old. True to his ilk, he never returns to what he has left behind, at least not apparently so, for who can evade the engram? So when he says he does not care to retrace his artistic journey, one believes him, for noticeably, he has never returned to the ethereally idealized planes of Buddhist that he had burnt his midnight oil creating, as a budding young painter.

 Long past romanticizing, Choyal paints not forts but its dilapidated edifice, not the lissome lass but her fatigued adulthood, not resplendent motherhood but the faceless, biological child bearer. The question is, can she vote out through her frame, the one in which she caught, even as it supports her as an inanimate wall piece?

 So over the years, P.N. Choyal has, through his derelict monument, nameless men and women, and the tips of his paint brush, consistently emerged as a humanitarian artists, in love with his legacy and proud of his birth.   -   Aruna Bhowmick 

 P.N. CHOYAL

 Born
 January 5, 1924 (Kota), Rajasthan.
 
 Education
• Fine Art Diploma (1948) and D.T.T. from School of Arts  & Crafts, Jaipur (1946).
• Government Diploma (Painting) – Sir J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai, 1953.
• Attended Slade College of Arts, University College, London, 1961-62.
• M.A. Hindi (Lit.) 1955.
• Attended All India Art Teachers Sequential Camp, Mumbai in the year 1970 and 1971.
• Attended Fresco and Mural Camp, Banasthali Vidyapeeth – 1967.
• Attended innumerable seminars and workshops at various Universities.

 Art Camps

• SARC Festival-1986
• Painters’ camp at Mandav, M.P.-1986.
• Painters’ camp Karnataka Akademy-1986.
• Aaj-1995, Udaipur 
• ABC Art Gallery, Varanasi, Jawahar Kala Kendra’s, Painters’ camp held at WZCC, Udaipur &  Art camp at Agra, in1996.
• Rajasthan Lalit Kala Akademi and Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi between 1970 and 1990.
• All India artists’ camp of fellows of Rajasthan Lalit Kala Akademi between 1996 – 1998
• Veteran Artists’ camp – Rajasthan Lalit Kala Akademi & West Zone Culture Centre – 1998
• 50 years Celebration camp - West Zone Culture Centre & North Zone Culture Centre – 1998
• Artist camp at Hyderabad, organized by WWF 2003
• Artist camp at Kurukshetra University 2003
• Artist camp at Bhuvnashwar, organized by Reflection of Another Day 2003
• Artist camp at Bikaner sponsored by AIFACS New Delhi 2004
• Artist Camp at Amritsar -2004.
• Art camp- come seminar Dayal Bagh University Agra 2007.
• Art Camp – HRC Management Institute, Jaipur
        2007.

 Awards

• Rajasthan Lalit Kala Akademi - 1960, 1961,1963,1964,1965 and 1968.
• Indian Academy of Fine Arts, Amritsar-1978-79.
• All India Fine Arts & Crafts Society, New Delhi-1983, 1986 & 1990.
• National Award by Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi-1988.
• Awarded as “ Kala Ratna ”, New Delhi – 2007.

 Honours

• Elected the ‘FELLOW’ by Rajasthan Lalit Kala Akademi.
• Veteran Artist’s honor by A.I.F.A.C.S. New Delhi - 1984.
• ‘Kala Ratna’ award – 2007 by Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi.

 One Man & Group Exhibitions

• Kota, Udaipur, Jaipur, Alwar, Delhi, Mumbai, Madras, Chandigarh, Banglore and Calcutta, Japan, Moscow, Brazil, Algeria etc.
• Participated in all major Art Exhibitions held in India which include All India Fine Arts & Crafts Society, New Delhi; Akademi of Fine Arts, Amritsar; Oriental Society and Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta; U.P. Akademi; Bombay Art Society; Drawing exhibitions organised by Govt Museums and Art Gallery, Chandigarh; Rajasthan Lalit Kala Akademi and Central Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi.

 Invitations

• Moscow-Veteran Artists of India-1986.
• VI Triennale-1986.
• Sao-Paulo-International Biennal-1987.
• Havana-International Biennal-1989. (Deputed Commissioner for Indian Section),
• Bharat Bhavan Biennal-1992.
• Birla Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta, Silver Jubilee Exhibition-1992.
• Global Forum , Shimane Artists Conference, Japan , 1992.
• One man Show at KYOTO (Japan) organised by Shimin Gaiko Association Sept-1992.
• Cultural Dept. Japan & Shimin Giako Assoc. Joint Exhibition at Kobe (JAPAN)-1993.

 Collections

        National Gallery of Modern Art, Lalit Kala Akademi, Rajasthan Lalit Kala Akademi, Modern Art Gallery, Chandigarh Museum, Govt. Museum Jaipur, Maharani Gayatri Devi, Governer’s house Jaipur, Maharao Bhim Singh Kota, H.H. Jawahar, Kamani Bros., Bajaj Enterprises, Taj group, Larson and Turbo, Union Carbide, Steel Authority of India, Air India, CRY, Jawahar Kala Kendra - Jaipur and Several other private collections in India and abroad. YAMASO BIJITSU Art Gallery, Kyoto, Japan.

 Distinct Invitations

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