The inhabitant of a politically-driven period during the mid 20th century, Brij Mohan Anand is known as the anti-establishment artist of colonial India. Born in 1928, he lived through the death of his brother, Madan Mohan, during the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, that drastically altered the political stability in his life. While the nationalists of Congress were busy practising moderate politics, Anand decided to move on to socialism and violently overthrow the colonial power.

Anand dropped out of school at an early age and never received an official form of education in fine arts. Instead, his signature medium was sketching on scratchboards, where he developed an extremely sensitive and expensive form of expression. He began his affair with it at the age of 9 and continued to earn his bread by doing commercial illustrations for newspapers, pocketbooks, and textbooks. His contemporaries were from the Bombay Progressive Group, which included M F Hussain, Tyeb Mehta, S.H. Raza and Krishen Khanna. Although none of their works matched Anand’s extremist socialist ideals. Since most of them were only concerned with narratives of materialism and identity, they could not cohesively reflect the degree of political awakening that Anand had started painting rigorously.

As Anand grew to paint as a form of protest, his artworks began echoing across the world, rather than just India. His paintings and illustrations became a tool to destabilise the western superpowers that were slowly making their way into the east. As a continuous critic of the Vietnam war, Indian militarisation and the Cold war, he painted using visual language that outlined his anger for each. From black and white scratchboard drawings to colourful pallets, as an artist, Anand experimented with many different kinds of artistic flavours. Although, satire remained a recurring theme and an essential undercurrent to each of his works. What makes him extraordinary is that he painted vividly about what he felt, yet managed to stand under the radar of the extraordinary as he did not conform the politics that dominated the climate of his period.

Even though most of his art remained hidden until now, the artist had put all his efforts to present this ‘paintings of protest’. He produced a painting in response to India’s first nuclear test at Pokhran, in Rajasthan, which he formally intended to present to Indira Gandhi. After which, in November 1955 he appeared uninvited with a painting, to a reception hosted by Jawaharlal Nehru for Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin and Communist Party First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. But he received a response he wouldn’t have expected — the Indian government confiscated his passport and placed him under local police surveillance.

He never tried to sell his work, instead choosing to use it as a form of social commentary. Therefore, most of his work remained hidden in his house and was found three decades after his death in 1986. But it wasn’t until recently that an exhibition was held in the honoring the era of modernity Anand brought to India. The exhibition was titled ‘Narratives for Indian Modernity: The Aesthetic of Brij Mohan Anand.’ It featured 35 sketches, 14 scratchboards, three scratchboard sketches, five ink drawings, six Red Cross posters, 23 book covers and five oil-on-canvas paintings — all giving insights to the unforgettable time Anand lived in.

“I often wonder how my father came up with these concepts because as kids we never really saw him leave the house to travel, meet people or read voraciously. In hindsight, his themes were extremely thought-provoking, well-researched and he even took on some of India’s icons like Gandhi in his works,” reflects his daughter Kriti Anand. Anand was undoubtedly a painter ahead of his time. Although undiscovered until now, we hope that his works open discussions that, even hailing from a context that is historical, may still have significant relevance today.

Scroll down to see some delightful pocketbook illustrations done by the rebel artist himself.