“With thinker’s frown the wrinkled brow
harbours but thought elect,
the tired head seeks rest, and how
the scalp receding heightens the effect.

Not cast in bronze, claiming cerulean fame,
not carved in stone posterity to master –
his friends themselves will hestitate to name
a thing revealed. It´s only clay and plaster.” (Leyden, card)

In 1949, Rudi von Leyden printed this poem on a personal greetings card that featured a photograph of a bust of himself, the Head by S.K. Bakre. To convey his personal good wishes he had chosen a sculpture in the making, of clay and plaster, a rough sculpture, an unbaked clay model instead of a bronze or stone version.
In July 1949, the first exhibition of the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG) opened in the salon of the Bombay Art Society. Leyden was there and wrote one of his acclaimed reviews. He had followed the six young featured artists over the years, cycling to the openings of their exhibitions and back to The Times of India to have his critique printed in the next day’s issue. Leyden’s consistency in reporting and reviewing generated a historical momentum for the young artists. He reminded his readers “that those who have followed the works of these artists over the past years would know of the struggle, the experiments, the trials that lie behind the considerable achievement which this exhibition represented.” (Leyden 1949, 8). And he warned them, “Those who go to exhibitions to look for pretty pictures will be, on the whole, disappointed. Those, who want painting to be the expression of the deeper emotions and strivings of a generation, will be satisfied with the progressive offering of these artists” (ibid).
Born into a business family in Baroda, sculptor and painter Bakre attended the Sir J.J. School of Arts in Bombay, obtaining a degree in sculpture in 1944. In protest against the election committee of the Bombay Art Society, he founded the Progressive Artists’ Group together with K.H. Ara, H.A. Gade, F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza and M.F. Husain in December 1947, to rebel against conventions, traditions and formalities in art. Also as an artist, Bakre was a rebel, always on the lookout for new materials, methods, forms of expression and innovative sculpting techniques. Over the years his development as a painter and sculptor followed a path from academic realism to abstraction. Of his exhibits at the 1949 exhibition, Leyden wrote: “Sculptor Bakre also joins in the quest for expression through formal values. His small pieces of sculpture in plaster and wood are most successful and his portrait of a high-minded journalist troubled with wicked thoughts is good in its summary rendering. How much more true is such portrait than the ‘life like’ likeness of the commercial bust maker.”
Is Leyden writing about the bust of himself? Or the “Portrait of T.D.”? About which the art critic Chatterjee commented, “this is a very courageously executed head, with a good deal of simplicity and directness, which indicate his considerable knowledge of form and technical ability” (Chatterji 1949, 10). Among the busts Bakre carved were those of several prominent members of the Bombay art community: such as the plaster bust of philanthropist and industrialist Sir Cowasji Jehangir, founder of the Jehangir Art Gallery; the bust of his PAG art comrade Ara; and the bust of Wayne Hartwell, who was with the United States Information Service in Bombay at the time and had offered Bakre a place to live and work in his own apartment. Bakre symbolically called Hartwell’s bust The Consulate (see Ganguly n.d. for photo of bust).
The greetings card simply refers to the bust of Leyden as Head and the later bronze sculpture in the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) also bears the name Head Study. The NGMA collection does not list any Bakre artwork on its online registry, nor has it responded to requests over the years. Fortunately, an art lover documented his walk through the gallery in 2018 and posted the photos on his online blog (Bhatia 2018).
How did the sculpture get to Delhi? In the 1950s, the state art institutions were centralised in Delhi. Leyden was a member of the selection and evaluation committee for the First National Art Exhibition, which took place in Delhi in 1955 and from which the NGMA emerged. However, we do not know who sold or donated to the museum the prestigious bronze sculpture made in 1950.
All we know is that Leyden considered the plaster/clay model of Bakre’s bust to be valuable, the raw model that may have been a sculpture for making a bronze, since the plaster/clay model was lost. Leyden also considered valuable the young searching artists who experimented with forms, methods, materials, techniques and forms of expression. The advertising specialist Leyden put the photo of Bakre’s bust in his shop window: his personal greetings card, which he sent to all his friends, business partners and relatives to introduce the young artist to the world.

Leyden confronted young local artists with modernist movements in Europe and America and introduced them to global art developments in innumerable informal meetings. In this he joined forces with other emigrants such as Walter and Käthe Langhammer, Emanuel Schlesinger, Charles Petras, Hermann Goetz and other art lovers in exile who acted like “tutors” (Bhagwat/Parimoo) to these artists in Bombay. They challenged the young artists and at the same time offered space for reflection, criticism, exhibition, education and self-development in a non-hierarchical way.
In 1951 Leyden ended his review of Bakre’s exhibitions of plastic works with the following words: “The diversity of Mr. Bakre’s work indicates that he is not yet mature, that he has not yet found the mould in which to cast his best and truly personal creations. But he has accumulated a rich hoard of plastic ideas and knowledge that will stand him in good stead when he does find himself.” (Leyden 1951, 3). With respectful criticism, Leyden encouraged Bakre’s talent; he aligned the young artist to international developments. In the same year Bakre emigrated to London.