Tom Keehn and his family came to Delhi in 1953 to set up an organisation funded by Nelson Rockefeller that would look into rural sector village handicrafts. He was also asked to encourage modern Indian art; enough was being done for ancient art. Thus began the earliest collection of modern art, much before Sotheby's and Christie's came into the picture. The friendships that resulted have lasted to this day. M.F. Husain, for instance, painted in the verandah of the Keehns' huge mansion and made forays into their family life.
The Keehns began to make a collection of the art of the period with painters like Ram Kumar, Krishen Khanna, V. Gaitonde, Satish Gujral and Husain. When international auction houses offered to buy their works recently, they declined but the prices offered came as something of a shock!
The tumultuous fifties as seen through the eyes of an American family in India is recorded in detail in this collection of letters, written by Tom's wife Martha Keehn to her parents back in the US. (She kept carbon copies.) When she died four years ago of cancer it was decided to bring out this book in her memory.
This handsome volume also has 23 colour plates from the Keehn collection, a foreword by Gloria Steinem and an account by Tom Keehn on the modern art movement in India. The Keehns' home has long been the hub for many artists, writers and other creative people like Martha Graham-the doyenne of modern dance who was allowed to go to Calcutta but not other Indian cities (until the Keehns intervened) because it was felt that her performance would reflect America in an unsuitable manner. Alexander Calder and Charles Eames are also mirrored on the pages of Martha's perpetually busy manual typewriter. Most amusing are her remarks on Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay's dinners, characterised by "no introduction, no drinks, lukewarm mutton curry served on cold plates in a chilly room which you eat standing up" but redeemed by "always interesting guests".
Perhaps the eight painters' exhibition held at Old Mill Road in 1956 was the first of its kind. Certainly the organising team led by Tom Keehns spent hours talking to the artists and painstakingly culling their essential beliefs.
The exhibition featured Husain, Krishen Khanna, Ram Kumar, Gaitonde, Satish Gujral, Bendre, K.S. Kulkarni and Mohan Samant. As they stated, "We are not a school or a group and beyond a common purpose and spirit of fraternity we preserve our individual identity. Our exhibition is an assertion that differences of vision and approach can exist side by side."
The institutional support behind the Indian art scene was partly created by the efforts of people like Tom Keehns. His constant negotiations with American philanthropists like Nelson Rockefeller in an attempt to establish the counterpart of the Museum of Modern Art in New York did not quite succeed but the InterNational Cultural Centre established in New Delhi harnessed the creative talent of the period.
The Keehns returned on a day of snowstorms in February 1961 to New York, but maintained their interest in Indian art.
Tom Keehn put his active participation behind the India Centre of Art and Culture, which opened in New York earlier this year. This warm and lively account of their time in India reveals many hidden gems both of art and of life.
