Vamona Navelcar is an artist who has lived, worked, and expressed his art across three continents. It would be a deserving honour to award the Gomant Vibhushan to him during his lifetime, opine the writers
Vamona Ananta Sinai Navelcar is an artist, whose roots lie in the coastal village of Pomburpa, and whose career has spanned several decades and three continents.
Vamona is little known in his homeland and his prestigious legacy is in need of recognition. His contemporaries, like V.S. Gaitonde, F.N. Souza, and Laxman Pai, have been recognised posthumously, which makes it obvious that Goan artists live in anonymity, whose contributions are under acknowledged as living testaments to Goa’s heritage.
The one thing that sets Vamona apart from his late contemporaries is that his canvas served as a chronicle of important moments in Goan, Portuguese and Mozambique histories. Known as an artist of three continents, Navelcar still demonstrates to how the time he spent he spent in these colonially connected lands, continues to form part of his aesthetic.
As a young boy growing up in Goa, Vamona always showed a penchant for art and had the habit of drawing on pieces of paper. In 1953, he painted a portrait of Dr António de Oliveira Salazar, the Prime Minister of Portugal, and was granted a scholarship by the Prime Minister himself.
Much as he was hesitant to leave his homeland, Vamona travelled to Lisbon, where he excelled at his studies. As these were the years of decolonisation and as Goa was transferred between Portugal and India, his grant was withdrawn when he refused to sign a document denouncing Jawaharlal Nehru’s actions against Goa as the territory was liberated from the Portuguese rule. Having no other choice, Vamona journeyed to Mozambique (still a Portuguese colony at that time) to teach geometry and mathematics, though he continued to draw and paint. But again, that country too found itself on the verge of decolonisation in the 1970s. Again, impacted by the weight of historical transformation and embroiled in political machinations, he was incarcerated along with his students in a prison camp in a remote forest area. Here too, Vamona found refuge in his paintings and his students helped him make murals.
When he was released, though disheartened, Vamona decided to leave Mozambique and his destination was once again Portugal.
In his biography, Vamona Navelcar: An Artist of Three Continents (2013) by Anne Ketteringham, it is well documented that though he made it to the end of his journey, his suitcase did not. There were over a thousand pieces of art that were never to be recovered, and with his caché lost, Vamona found it difficult to make a living as an artist in Portugal. The country was still recovering from The Carnation Revolution of 1974 and it was then that he decided that it was best to return to his native Goa. However, the Goa he returned to in the 1980s, after having spent his most productive years in other locations, was unfamiliar with this artist’s body of work.
Vamona excels in Christian figurative art and adopted the name of ‘Ganesh’ after an incident that caused him to be ‘reborn’ (Lord Ganesh is associated with new beginnings) and in memory of his late brother Ganesh. He has twice received the Gulbenkian Foundation Fellowships (1963 and 1971) and he won an international award at the International Exhibition of Art in Monte Carlo for his ink drawing, Angoch Woman (fisher woman). Vamona is considered a “prolific master of line” with a specialisation in murals and bas-relief composed of metallic, wooden and glass structures and his works form part of private and museum collections worldwide.
In 2017, Casa de Goa, a centre for cultural activities which has promoted ties between Goa and Portugal for about 30 years, celebrated their 50th anniversary. As part of the celebrations, the Prime Minister of Portugal, António Costa was presented with a portrait of Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, painted by Vamona. Costa’s father, Orlando da Costa, had once visited Vamona’s Pomburpa home and where the artist had drawn a portrait of da Costa Senior.
Vamona has had various exhibitions spanning decades. His first exhibition was in the early 1960s at the Palacio Foz in Lisbon. As part of Semana da Cultura (a celebration of Indo-Portuguese cultural fusion) in 2011, Vamona’s work was displayed at the Sunaparanta, Goa Centre for the Arts in an exhibition titled “In dreams the work is born”. The exhibition ran from 22 to 31 October 2011. From 23 June to 9 September 2012, Navelcar exhibited his work at the Figueiro de Vinhos gallery, in the centre of Portugal. A Retrospective Exhibition was held in Portugal from June to October 2012 curated by Vamona’s long standing friend and admirer, Professor Antonino Martins Mendes.
On 1 May 2017, an exhibition celebrating his life and work called “The Great Goan Art Festival” was organized by Marius Fernandes at Campal in Panaji. His works were displayed from 12 December 2017 to 12 January 2018 at the Fundação Oriente, Panjim, in an exhibition titled Goa/Portugal/Mozambique: The Many Lives of Vamona Navelcar, featuring 16 of his works. The exhibition is co-hosted by the Al-Zulaij Collective, and an accompanying book was released, with the same title as the exhibition. Vamona has lived and worked in three continental locations, which makes it pertinent to think about the artist and his life’s work as part of a global historical terrain. His is a story that others of his generation share in their journeys across the Lusophone world while still being connected to Goa, which itself received the cultural influences of these locations, making it the distinctive place it is. As if Vamona’s sojourns in Mozambique and Portugal were not decades ago, one sees the artist revisit these places in how he represents them in his art though he now resides in Goa. Nevertheless, one must recognize the deep irony of the notion of ‘return’ in Vamona’s art, given the recurrent exilic experiences that he has endured at multiple times and locations.
Vamona’s practice engages ideas of return, movement, loss of home, and displacement as they are informed by personal circumstances and historical forces. Efforts to give the artist, now in his 90s, his due in his native land, in the hope of securing his legacy while he is still alive. In so doing, recognizing Vamona will in turn inspire other present-day artists of Goan origin and those to come
(This article has excerpts from R. Benedito Ferrão, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, English and Asian & Pacific Islander American Studies, The College of William and Mary; and Vishvesh Kandolkar, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Goa College of Architecture, from their letter in Support of the Nomination of Goan Artist Vamona Ananta Sinai Navelcar for the Award of Gomant Vibhushan)
