Master of line work, Vamona Navelcar passes away at 91

PANAJI: The last couple of years of his life, Vamona Anant Sinai Navelcar had to live with poor hearing and could barely speak. But a few months until his death, at the age of 91, Navelcar did not give up drawing.
On Monday, Navelcar breathed his last due to a heart ailment, having spent some time on life support in a private hospital in Dona Paula. His last rites were performed around 12noon the same day.
Some years before his health began deteriorating, Navelcar scribbled in his notebook, “Physical strength due to age may become a certain sort of hurdle, but the mind overcomes all the negative impacts on one’s emotion.The mind demands and the creator fulfils his emotions and creativity”.
His artworks are part of private and public collections across nearly every major city in the world, but Navelcar felt he was at his creative best in his dimly-lit room in his family’s ancestral home in Pomburpa.
With his fluid line drawings, Navelcar captured the imagination of the art world from Asia to Europe to Africa since the early 1960s.
“He spent a large part of his life in Portugal and Mozambique, and when he returned to Goa, the artist community was not as big as it is today. And he felt he was not accepted, even though in the end he was very loved by everyone,” said artist Yolanda de Souza.
It is possibly about this feeling of aloofness, Navelcar wrote, “Lobby! I haven’t had this type of bulldozers to push me forward in art. I need to march forward on my own initiative”.
It was De Souza who offered Navelcar his first solo show in Goa.
“He had his first solo show in the early 2000s in Goa at my gallery, and I put up his works on our website, and his students from Portugal and Mozambique contacted me and bought his works. His students loved him so much. One woman came to Goa from Portugal and bought his works. He did not have to do much, his works made him very loved,” she said.
Christ was a recurring theme in his paintings, which made Navelcar the only Indian artist to have painted such varied interpretations of The Last Supper.
Despite recognition the world over, the younger generation in Goa woke up to his artistic genius only over the past four to five years.
“He was already a superstar in Europe. He influenced an entire generation across three continents. But it was embarrassing that the younger generation in Goa knew nothing about him, until he was brought to the mainstream here through a festival we organised in his honour in 2017,” said Marius Fernandes, who became aware during his stint abroad of the fame Navelcar had gained in the art world internationally.
“He was very shy and gentle, and when we organised the festival in his honour, people challenged us that he would not turn up. But my son and daughter spoke to him and he agreed. He was a teacher to the core who loved youngsters,” said Fernandes
When youngsters Ashley Fernandes and Ronak Kamat filmed Navelcar for a documentary and asked him what it should be called, Navelcar decided to title the film, ‘I am nothing’.
“He was an artist loved by many but understood by few. He was recognised globally for his work, but also denied timely formal recognition by the state, which mattered most to him. He will live on through his work for many years to come,” said Ashley.