Rather than the seemingly serendipitous affiliations I’d lined up before I left, it turns out that I fell in with a band of thieves when I first got to Sri Lanka. Not only did the avuncular landlord in Mount Lavinia keep finding more expenses to tack on to my rent, he started paying too close attention to my comings and goings and with whom I did those comings and goings. He turned out to be a bit of a con and a bit more of a creep. I "shifted" to a friend's place in Thimbirigasaya, an upscale neighborhood in Colombo, then to the artists' guesthouse at Sapumal Foundation, about which an article appeared just yesterday in Pakistan's Express Tribune:
. . . a quiet Saturday morning, on wide roads, rain trees shading the affluent Colombo 7 area, holding out an intense, oncoming humidity, leafy, green, fragrant. Turn on to a small side-road, and you have arrived at the 100-year old bungalow, at 32/4 Barnes Place. Here lies Sapumal Foundation. It is fabled as possessing one of the finest collections of modern art in Sri Lanka.
The Foundation was established in 1974 by portrait artist Harry Pieris. Managed by a trust, it serves primarily as a gallery and as an art resource space. The property maintains a detailed reference library and newspaper archive, supplying both university and independent research projects. It also contains on its premises a working studio and a flat for art residencies. And it maintains Pieris’ permanent art collection. At any one time, there are on display some 350 paintings, drawings and photographs, which trace the development of Sri Lankan art from the 1920s to date.
The core of the collection consists of work by members of the original ‘43 Group. As its name implies, the Group was founded in Colombo in 1943, as a reaction against the then prevalent mode of painting, Victorian naturalism and the redundancy of its patron, the Ceylon Society of Arts. Regularly barred from exhibiting by the judges of the Society, the ‘43 Group provided a platform for new, experimental expression in Sri Lanka . . . . . .room upon room opens onto cool polished cement floors and high ceilings, walls filled with paintings. The light here is dappled, and carries with it the scent of champa and jasmine flowers from the rambling green garden outside. There is nothing of the museum here, nor of monument. Instead, one discovers a manner of generosity. Sapumal Foundation provides an excerpt of art history, at human scale, in simple, richly distilled lines.
Barnes Place is in Colombo 7 or Cinnamon Gardens, one of the city's more posh neighborhoods. The home of Sir Arthur C Clark is across the street, his study just as he left it.
. . . a quiet Saturday morning, on wide roads, rain trees shading the affluent Colombo 7 area, holding out an intense, oncoming humidity, leafy, green, fragrant. Turn on to a small side-road, and you have arrived at the 100-year old bungalow, at 32/4 Barnes Place. Here lies Sapumal Foundation. It is fabled as possessing one of the finest collections of modern art in Sri Lanka.
The Foundation was established in 1974 by portrait artist Harry Pieris. Managed by a trust, it serves primarily as a gallery and as an art resource space. The property maintains a detailed reference library and newspaper archive, supplying both university and independent research projects. It also contains on its premises a working studio and a flat for art residencies. And it maintains Pieris’ permanent art collection. At any one time, there are on display some 350 paintings, drawings and photographs, which trace the development of Sri Lankan art from the 1920s to date.
The core of the collection consists of work by members of the original ‘43 Group. As its name implies, the Group was founded in Colombo in 1943, as a reaction against the then prevalent mode of painting, Victorian naturalism and the redundancy of its patron, the Ceylon Society of Arts. Regularly barred from exhibiting by the judges of the Society, the ‘43 Group provided a platform for new, experimental expression in Sri Lanka . . . . . .room upon room opens onto cool polished cement floors and high ceilings, walls filled with paintings. The light here is dappled, and carries with it the scent of champa and jasmine flowers from the rambling green garden outside. There is nothing of the museum here, nor of monument. Instead, one discovers a manner of generosity. Sapumal Foundation provides an excerpt of art history, at human scale, in simple, richly distilled lines.
Barnes Place is in Colombo 7 or Cinnamon Gardens, one of the city's more posh neighborhoods. The home of Sir Arthur C Clark is across the street, his study just as he left it.
