Veer Munshi, was born and brought up in Kashmir Valley. He is one of the few painters in India today who is able to transform his experiences as an exiled refugee into the language of painting. Munshi was was forced to move to Delhi in 1990 when it was no longer safe for him to stay there. For Munshi, viewing pleasure plays no role in his objective as an artist. His work is very personal and at most times disturbing. It is his reaction to a specific event - in this case, the ongoing political situation in his home, Kashmir - and he wants everyone who views his work to understand what is happening there. In Veer Munshi's paintings we see a reflection of the anguish and fear he felt whilst living in his own home, a fear that plagued so many other Kashmiris as well.
His work has been inspired not only from the political and social situation in India but also his own real life experiences. He has the ability to transform real life experiences into the language of paintings. Veer Munshi is the quintessential artist - brooding, thinking and conceptualizing to create a new every time he touches his brush to canvas. The perspective is global yet the rooted-ness pan Indian - he carries the wistful beauty of Kashmir in his mind's canvas along with the polished perfection of the Baroda School to immortalise all that he chooses to paint. Veer Munshi's canvases present images which are intriguing.
The power of Munshi's realistic approach is magnified by his ability to convey mood through composition and corresponding use of colour. The artist also manages to manipulate the colour he uses to suit the message of his paintings. Shades of red, orange and lush geen, otherwise warm and inviting, are given harsh and dark roles. His purples are potent and the shades of brown always cloak and muddy everything.
The puppet master, an image which recurs again and again, the hands manipulating the strings of destruction, is seen in the painting. The puppet master who interestingly looks like Veer Munshi himself is clothed in green and stands against the fallen arches of destroyed doorways, manipulating the future of the valley.
Munshi's paintings illustrates the artist's bitterness upon seeing a once beautiful valley ravaged by men intent on nothing but their own gain in the name of patriotism. This was also reflected in the installation Munshi put up in 2001 - an upturned market boat, the symbol of Kashmiri living, was transformed into a coffin, and ten pictures of the artist on its sides were labeled secessionist, refugee, displaced, fundamentalist and other things Kashmiris were called.
Today, eleven years later, the immediacy has disappeared from Munshi's work. The problem, rather than fading away, has intensified and the artist has moved from a loud activism to a quiet acceptance and deeper understanding of the fate of his homeland. He says, "Today I view Kashmir alternatively - as a nostalgic memory and as a problem."
An artist like Veer Munshi is one of the few painters in India who is able to well transform his experiences in Kashmir into the language of painting. In his paintings, one can easily find out the artist's expression of human rights violations in Kashmir. If anyone ever believed that the importance of a painting lay in its viewing pleasure, Veer Munshi has proved them wrong. His work is a reaction to a deeply felt and experienced political situation i.e. being a "refugee" (displaced person) from Kashmir and is a real depiction of the private and collective anguish borne of separation from his home and Kashmiri heritage and life style. Despite the slash of the primaries and the virulence of the purples, his canvases have a serenity which is born from the intrinsic pacifism of his nature.
Munshi's canvases present images that are intriguing. They cross average notions of reality and pass into a surreal realm. He works in oils and sometimes sketches in charcoal He is a painter with a clearly defined course. Rather than leaving viewers with a light hearted happy feeling, Munshi wants his works to cause reflection and spread awareness.
Currently living and working in Gurgaon, Haryana, Veer Munshi has exhibited his works not only in India but in different parts of the world as well.
"I remember trying desperately to make pretty paintings to sell as I needed the money. But they just wouldn't come. Then I made a painting 'Terrorist on a Floating Land,' and began a two-year long series on Kashmir."
- Veer Munshi
