Ramesh Pateria: A Creative Marble Sculptor From India

I first met Ramesh Pateria in the late 1960s when I visited his show at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai. There was a wild animal quality about him. Badly shaven and with disheveled hair, he looked like a street bum. But his artwork was outstanding. They were pieces of marble precisely carved with a strong hand into impressive sculptures. They were a far cry from the realistic figures of life-size damsels intricately carved in white marble that we commonly find in the gardens of Europe. Pateria’s bold sculptures were strikingly different. They were modern shapes, striking 3-dimensional images, most of them 3 to 4 feet in size. Some were smaller, only 1 foot tall, and some were larger, measuring 6 feet or more in length. The line was clean and it looked like a painting materialized in a solid form of marble.

I asked him: “Why marble?” She looked at my suit and boots appearance and smiled. “I like the material. It has natural lines and patterns within the rock. I take it as a challenge to bring out its inner beauty in my forms. Plus, marble is easy to work with.” He replied looking pleased that I was taking an interest in his work. “Where do you find such beautiful marble rocks?” I naively asked.

“You can find them in the Makrana marble mines in Rajasthan. You have to be there when the rock is mined. Not all the pieces are interesting. The selection is easier at night when the cutting is done under strong lights that highlight the lines. internal in the rock. I live in the mine like a common worker in a simple shack”. Pateria was sincere with his explanation. His eyes sparkled and he has a magnetic quality to his voice and mannerisms that belie the ragged appearance of him. I liked him and his work. I bought one of the pieces.

We became friends. Every time he came to Mumbai we would meet and listen to his experiences in the marble mine. He loved to passionately describe how he sculpted particular pieces using focused light. He moved the light around the piece, raising and lowering it to show me how he shaped it as he carved it at night. The light cast shadows that highlighted the features of the sculpture and I saw the lines as master strokes by the acclaimed artist! He recounted how he sat outdoors on a folding steel chair with a glass of local beer in hand staring at the raw stone. He kept looking at him for several minutes at a time as he worked out his future form in his mind. He would sometimes make a sketch before starting to carve.

I developed in his story. Pateria was born in Rajasthan near the famous Makrana marble mines. As a child, he was fascinated with the work of marble carvers who chipped blocks of marble to create statues of Hindu gods. His attraction to stone shaping led him to an art school and resulted in his graduation from the College of Fine Arts in Baroda, a city in the state of Gujarat. He worked continuously for several hours with absolute concentration while sculpting marble rocks into modern art objects. His work attracted attention and earned him Madhya Pradesh state scholarships in 1964-65, and a government cultural scholarship from the Ministry of Education. from India in 1967-69. He taught art to children at the New Delhi Modern School in 1971-72. He then obtained a British Council scholarship to study sculpture at Portsmouth Polytechnic in the UK during 1972-73 and painting at the Royal College of Art in London in 1973-74. He had several shows to his credit and is featured in the book “Indian Sculpture Today 1983” published by Mumbai’s Jehangir Art Gallery.

One day Pateria came to my house and announced to me and my wife that he had gotten married! He introduced us to his wife Esther David, who was a sculpture student and, as they had worked with a common guru, Sanco Chaudhary, they had fallen in love! Esther was the daughter of the famous zoologist Reuben David, who created the zoo in the city of Ahmadabad in India. But we wondered how it would work with Maverick Pateria. Our fears were realized as soon as they separated and later divorced. Later, Esther turned to writing and became a well-known author with many published books.

Recognition came Pateria’s way when he won the National Prize for sculpture from the foremost body of art and culture in India, the Lalit Kala Academy in New Delhi in 1969. Pateria exhibited regularly in national exhibitions at Triennials and Biennials in India and Europe. As Pateria continued to work, he became a sought-after artist and his works fetched prices in the five and then six figures. But despite his large income, he continued to live in the same simple and bohemian way. He won several awards at state exhibitions and in 1982 he was crowned with the prestigious “Shikhar Award” by the Government of Madhya Pradesh.

A renowned art critic SV Vasudev wrote that Pateria “has grasped the modern language in its entirety to arrive at an individual style that, once again, constantly renews itself for an extensive exploration of marble as a medium and sculpture as art – precise in its diction and profound in its meaning”.

Unfortunately for the art world, Ramesh Pateria died young at the age of 50 in a tragic accident in New Delhi in 1987. I was very sad because my friend was gone and India had lost a very good sculptor. I wish I had lived longer and he would have filled the world with more of his marvelous visionary marble creations. But it wasn’t going to be. However, his immortal art continues to delight us.

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