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An essay on Prem Raval and his art- from the book �Hymns from the Rig Veda� by Professor Jean LeM�e, New York and Volker Stutzer, Germany. The essay was written by Volker Stutzer introducing the presentation of number of Prem�s paintings, illustrating the stanzas of Rig Veda in that book.

A Brahmin�s Vedic world of pictures
An Indian artist, Brahmin, paints pictures, illustrating stanzas of the venerable RIG-VEDA, testimony of an earlier stage of civilisation. At first glance it doesn�t look surprising. After all Brahmins preserved the heritage of a language, once founded by the RISHIS or seers when the world was young. The antique Brahmin culture and their offspring and descendants, reaching down the time to our days, are rooted in the VEDAS. From a Western viewpoint a Brahmin seems being the first choice to illustrate the VEDAS.

At first glance one might be mislead.

Professor Jean LeM�e, esteemed Sanskrit-scholar, to whom we have to be thankful for this book, has written a learned, informative and comprehensible introduction, earnestly recommended to all, who are really interested in the matter. He reveals the tremendous, unbelievable huge difficulties in grasping, understanding and interpreting the Vedic texts. Additional to it come the problems of the translation into modern languages.

Antique Sanskrit has been a language, invented and formed by the �Men of the Word� , the �First Path Makers�. Reaching down the heritage for thousand of years has been a matter of language as well and language is also the herewith presented translation. Well considered how difficult the work is � though on even level with the original � and how many mistakes are possible, what about �painted language�? Will say: How will a painter manage to transform structure, contents, means and tone of the VEDAS into a coloured painting and keep fair to the original?

Here meet two entirely different media and interact. Are the sounds of syllables colours? Is rhythm a structure of a picture?

Prem Raval, the Brahmin artist from Gujarat, the homeland of Mahatma Gandhi, tried to express the mental and emotional contents of the VEDAS, the spiritual ground-bass as it were. through his media of paintings. Of course he profits from the fact that Brahmins �inhale� Sanskrit, even though they are not educated as priests or linguistic scholars. He is in advantage to a � let us chose only two examples � modern European or North American artist, who has to open up for himself the sense of the VEDAS and likely fails.

This judgement should be limited.

Because the genius of an artist on principle is unlimited in matters of facts, and would he be a simple brush-mover or trendy charlatan, who is tailoring the Emperors New Clothes, even Sanskrit could not help him.

Prem Raval however is an artist of own stature and long before he got the idea of using the RIG VEDA as source of his paintings he created pictures entirely unconventional.

His works have nothing to do with the Indian tradition of painting, apart from the fact that there has to be realized a difference of quality to the Indian tradition of architecture, literature and metaphysics. But Prem is also no imitator of European art of painting. �Representational� in the sense of the word is nothing in his art, though he depicts �things�. These he transforms on a higher level.

Prem Raval rates himself indebted to a way of painting (and here he meets again the VEDAS, using words and tones fore the same purpose) that transforms mental situation and changeableness, spiritual condition and possibility into colours and uses them as means of transport for emotions, understanding and discovery. Colours are very well apt to lead to the aim � outlines, �physically frozen shapes� (so to say) are less helpful, though being a meaningful completion to the colours.

At first glance Prem Raval succeeded in making the seemingly impossible possible. He converted the from Professor LeM�e so lucid explained ambiguity, mobility and openness for interpretation of the VEDAS in an equal ambiguity, mobility and openness for interpretation of colour and form.

Professor LeM�e is advising the readers of the VEDAS to read them aloud, to after-taste sound and rhythm and try in this way to understand and �breathe� their enigmatic depth and beauty. Prem Ravals paintings should be seen in a similar way. Eyes and senses should �guzzle� them and after a while they turn from a coloured canvas into a transcendental world.

The artist knows how to show the innermost being through the external appearance. The mares of the sun-god rage up the ocean and over the heaven and one understands at once how these ancient Indians, coming from the wide steppes of Inner-Asia and seeing first time the �end of the world and the mysteriously rolling waves� experienced the enchanted mere, the life-giving light and the warmth.

One of the RISHIS speaks of �enjoying the Gods�. What a marvellous, heart-warming picture! What a contrast to the Gods of other people of that early time, emerging in human conscious as Gods of revenge and blood. Obviously Prem Raval, painting his pictures, himself �enjoyed the Gods� and shares the emotion with us.

He is a contemporary, a �modern Indian�, as we say without thinking, but in him lives and works still what Professor LeM�e so understandably phrases: �the heritage of one of the earliest and purest civilisations of mankind, reached down through thousand of years�. Therefore it was perfectly correct of him to dare an artistic interpretation of some stanzas of the VEDAS in the way he masters. He created a manifestation of a very old and venerable culture, still speaking aloud to us.

While painting did Prem Raval sing the stanzas for himself? Let us ask him!

Rig Veda 1

2002
oil on canvas
45 x 55 cm

Rig Veda 10

2002
oil on canvas
42x35 cm

Rig Veda 15

2002
oil on canvas
42 x 35 cm

Rig Veda 11

2002
80 x 50 cm
oil on canvas

Gandhi

1983
oil on canvas
60 x 70 cm

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

1991
OIL ON CANVAS
80 X 80 CM

Sky 17

2003
oil on canvas