Claire Hamant and her family’s artistic legacy come to Bengaluru

From December 17, Chitra Kala Parishath will exhibit the works of nine French artists from the same family

Frenchwoman Odette Aubel’s sense of aesthetics in the mid-1900s created a legacy of art that still lives on. Today, among her daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are painters, sculptors, dancers, filmmakers and photographers, eight of whom will be displaying their work this weekend.

While on a trip to France in 2012, Geetha Bhat met Claire Hamant, Odette’s daughter and it was the start of a beautiful friendship. “I am passionate about art and I was interested in the way Claire worked — she saw beauty in the most mundane things. I saw her pick up a leaf fallen by the roadside; it was a work of art when I next visited her place,” says Geetha Bhat, founder of the Centre for Revival of Indigenous Art (CFRIA) in Bengaluru.

“Claire visited India for the first time in 2013 and was utterly taken up by our country, clicking thousands of photographs. On a subsequent visit, I saw she had painted dozens of canvases inspired by her trip, all her impressions had found expression through her art.”

With frequent travels to each other’s homes, Geetha eventually met the other members of Claire’s family — her sisters, their children and their grandchildren — and realised four generations of the family were each artistically gifted in their own way. “Her nephew Marc had been to Rajasthan and captured that state’s glory through his photographs, which in turn inspired his mother who had never been here to create a series of paintings.”

Geetha was so amazed by how attuned the family was to art, she decided to curate an exhibition centred around their work. The result was Creativity Across Generations which showcases their creativity through myriad genres.

Among the 85 photographs, 22 paintings, four ceramic works, four textile works and around 20 graphic prints on display in Bengaluru, will be Odette’s oil painting of a few morning glory blossoms, a piece which enjoyed pride of place in the family home. “All four generations of our family grew up around this work. All our art, creativity and serendipity came from my mother,” says Claire Hamant over the phone from France.

She adds that an installation of a ceramic fountain crafted by her brother Jean Louis was inspired by the memory of a summer day the family spent together. The piece which now belongs in a French village square will be reassembled in Bengaluru. “Measuring about 10 feet in width and 6 feet in height, each segment of this installation stands for a member of our family and our memories of that day,” says Claire.