Pilloo Pochkhanawala

Pilloo Pochkhanawala (1 April 1923 – 7 June 1986) was among the first few women sculptors in India. Through her dynamic works, which were often inspired by nature or human figures, Pochkhanawala established herself as a pioneer of modern sculpture among her contemporaries. Her oeuvre includes intricate drawings, theatrical sets, although she is most famous for her sculptures.

In addition to being an artist, Pochkhanawala was also a facilitator and mediator of the arts in Bombay. From the 1960s, she organized the Bombay Art Festival for many years. They were a Parsi family who followed the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism. She was brought up in the household of her paternal grandparents in a traditional joint family consisting of three children and eleven grandchildren. Members of her family were the owners of Cowasjee Dinshaw and Brothers. With the head office of their firm in Bombay, their business also extended to Arabia, Africa and Aden. Pochkhanawala visited these places during her childhood, out of which Zanzibar impressed her the most, especially because of its African Voodoo cult rites.

Instead of following the rigid customs of the family, Pochkhanawala was exposed to diverse perspectives in the company of her peers, both in secondary school and college. The struggle for Indian independence was at its peak during her youth. She became a part of cultural and political changes that were happening with the rise of Quit India Movement whilst World War II. In 1945, she received her bachelor's degree in commerce from Bombay University and went on to work in an advertising firm. This rekindled and further sparked her desire to pursue visuals arts and motivated her to turn into a sculptor. She decided to devote herself entirely to sculpture after returning to Bombay. Moreover, a visit to England in 1970 and meetings with renowned sculptors such as Henry Moore, Kenneth Armitage, Barbara Hepworth and Eduardo Paolozzi provided her with an impressionable insight into the meaning of modern sculpture.

Style

Largely experimental in her approach, Pochkhanawala's oeuvre includes a range of materials and approaches from wood, cement, metal, mesh and transparent sheets, eventually turning to "found" and scrap metal, welding and casting them to make her signature forms. Her early works displayed a marked influence of Henry Moore, which mainly featured figures of seated women in wood.

Work

Public sculptures Pochkhanawala is best remembered for her public sculptures, the most famous of which was called Spark and stood over two storeys tall at the old Haji Ali Circle in Mumbai. Originally commissioned by Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST), it was made in her distinct style by welding scrap metal together. It is assumed to have gotten its name from the BEST's connection to electricity and the sculpture's contrast of heavy material and light, bird-like features. The location was important to her as she lived in the area. However, the sculpture had a troubled history, being moved to a smaller circle during her lifetime. It eventually disappeared in a road expansion project in early 1990s. In 2002, a scale model, at one-third the height of the original, was installed through a citizen's initiative, on a traffic island outside the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai. In late 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, the replica was lost in a beautification drive. Another public sculpture of Pochkhanawala is Stone Age To Space, installed at the Nehru Centre. It is made of rough sandstone and cast aluminium.

Other works Pochkhanawala had created stage design for five plays, which included Girish Karnad's Tughlaq (1970) and The Book of Job (1976). Along with N. S. Bendre, Kiran Gujral, M. F. Husain, Paritosh Sen and Krishen Khanna, Pochkhanawala was among the six Indian artists who designed new laminates for Formica India. She wrote a piece about The Rodin Exhibition for the NCPA Quarterly Journal which took place from 19 March to 11 April 1983 at the Tata Theatre. In 1984, she was appointed as a member to the Advisory Panel of the Central Board of Film Certification.

Exhibitions Pochkhanawala had solo exhibitions from 1955 to 1978 in Bombay, and in Delhi in 1965, 1968 and 1982. Her piece titled Frenzy was exhibited in the Tenth National Exhibition of Art at the Lalit Kala Akademi. The international shows included exhibitions at Minnesota, USA (1980); Middleheim, Belgium (1974); Belgrade; Bangkok; Tokyo (1967) and in London (1963).

During one of the modern art exhibitions in Bombay, her sculptures were at display in the Prince of Wales Museum. In his book The Heart of India, Duncan Forbes has written about the moment when Pochkhanawala was talking about her work:I go to a factory to get all these bits of metal. They call it scrap. Some people don't understand these sculptures, but you know, I have a class of deaf and dumb children I teach, and I brought them round without saying anything to them, and do you know, one of the little girls was standing in front of this one, the Kathakali, and she actually began to do a kind of dance. Isn't that amazing? Forbes took a second look of the sculpture and realized that the crude shapes of the sculpture indeed had some evocative power. He further wrote that, possibly, it was the crude nature of the artwork that allowed the imagination to be free and experience it fully.

Awards and recognition Pochkhanawala received several awards in her lifetime which included a silver medal from the All India Sculptors' Association and another silver medal from Bombay Art Society, both in 1954. This was followed by a couple of prizes at the Maharashtra State Art Exhibition in 1955 and 1961; 1st Prize at the Mumbai State Art Exhibition in 1959 and an award by Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi in 1979. Her husband belonged to the family of Sir Sorabji Pochkhanawala, one of the founders of the Central Bank of India. and The 10 Year Hustle. However she remains largely forgotten with her public sculptures lost or unknown. She was one of the earliest proponents of a modernist wave in Indian sculpture, developing a style that moved away from merely making copies of popular figures.