12-31-07
Stevens to Discuss Nepalese Artist at Walpole Town Library
"Against the Current": The Life and Times of Lain Singh Bangdell
by Chuck Bingaman, Contributing Writer
Merv Stevens of Walpole will display and discuss his collection of paintings by famed Nepalese painter, writer and art historian Lain Singh Bangdell at the Walpole Town Library Tuesday evening, January 15 at 7:30 p.m in a program sponsored by the Friends of the Walpole Town Library and the Library itself.
Stevens, who served as senior advisor to the Ministry of Forests in Nepal while working for the Food & Agricultural Organization of the UN, lived in the capital, Kathmandu, from 1975 to 1980. Previously he had assisted in rebuilding the Vietnamese forestry service in the early 70s and later he served the UN while stationed in Rome.
How did he get involved with the art of Nepal? "Well, my wife, Betty, and I arrived in Nepal with our daughters, Julie and Beth, and our suitcases and had to furnish a house. We were told to see a man by the name of Lain Singh Bangdell about some art for our walls. Kathmandu was rather small in those days and we had heard of him."
Merv with one of the paintings he'll exhibit at the Walpole Town Library January 15.
"We bought a number of Lain's works, starting with "The Mountain" that I'll show at the library, and we just became good friends. As it turned out, we met a lot of different artists in Nepal, but Lain Singh was their leader. He just brought people together. We had teas, dinners, lunches and talked about world affairs," Stevens noted last week. "We also did a lot of hiking together."
Bangdell actually was brought up in Darjeeling in India where his father was a clerk on a tea estate. He attended art school and graduate school in Calcutta, studied art in France for three or four years and painted in London for five years. While in France he associated with a group of French artists whose numbers included Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Along the way, Bangdell also wrote three novels, all in Nepali, about people who had wandered away from their homeland and failed to find happiness.
Bangdell had major shows on the continent in the 1950s before King Mahendra of Nepal enticed him back to his ancestral homeland in the early 60s to eventually become Chancellor of the Arts. In his official position, Bangdell established art galleries in Nepal and became an energetic historian of Nepalese art with several art history volumes to his credit. His books, including THE STOLEN IMAGES OF NEPAL, seek to document historical works of private and public art that have been plundered over the years, to limit the market for stolen items and to seek their return from collectors and museums that acquired them without knowing they were stolen.
"Many times," Stevens recalled last week, "we would hike far into the country to find ancient pieces of public art or locations where important art pieces had been stolen."
"Against the Current: The Life, Times and Works of Lain Singh Bangdell" will be open to the public at the Walpole Town Library Tuesday, January 15 from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. Light refreshments will be served and there is no charge.
For further information, call the fully accessible Walpole Town Library at 756-9806.
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