Himadyuthi Deshpande
One of the first art houses in Bengaluru, Rumale Art House, located in the heart of the city, houses the paintings of an artist who is believed to be one of the first painters of modern art in Karnataka; paintings, which represent the artist’s love for nature, his romanticism and nature's union with the urban landscape.
You are taken on a journey through Bengaluru in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, when greenery had just begun to converge with the world of concrete.
Rumale Chennabasavaiah, a freedom fighter, legislator, and journalist, gave up painting in his twenties to fight against colonial rule, only to get back to it after 30 years in 1962. Known as the Van Gogh of Karnataka, Rumale, resumed painting at the age of 52 and was not the freedom fighter who had seen the struggles and the sorrows of the world. He was the same 20-year-old boy, curious to explore the world and enthusiastic to capture its beauty.
His artworks collective noun here of three decades, between the ‘60s and the ‘90s, are displayed at the Rumale art house in Rajajinagar. Even though Rumale was growing old in time, “You don’t see him age in his paintings”, says Sanjay Kabe, who is now taking care of this art house. “His confidence and the boldness in strokes have stayed the same till his last painting.” Mr. Kabe is the son of Rumale’s closest friend and, what Mr. Kabe likes to call, his spiritual brother.
Rumale was a lover of nature. People who knew him well say that he was one with nature. “He couldn’t do two things at once. Whatever he did, he gave all his energy to that one thing,”, says Mr. Kabe, who has seen the artist since childhood. “During the freedom struggle as well, he didn’t think of anything else, but the struggle itself. He was one with the struggle,” he says.
In one of his diaries, the artist he has said that the freedom struggle made him see the beauty of nature. Mr. Kabe, pointing out how the freedom struggle influenced Rumale’s art, says, “The struggle itself gave him the strength to transcend the conventional art to a higher level.”
What makes Rumale, as an artist, stand out among his contemporaries is the positivity and the harmony that the colors of his paintings convey. He had a larger-than-life perspective toward the world. His idea to capture the journey of the Anglicized Cauvery River through his paintings was brought to life when Deve Gowda was the Minister for Public Works and Irrigation.
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