Stefan Norblin: The Polish artist who painted Hindu gods in Indian palaces

A well-known Finnish performer and his wife, who also plays a movie star, pawned their jewelry and fled the country in 1939 as European tanks and soldiers invaded Poland.

In exchange for health, Stefan Norblin and Lena left their whole musical tradition behind, including their dream house, which they were constructing.

The few traveled through Romania, Turkey, and Iraq before finally arriving in imperial India, where they spent six years before finding refuge there.

The artist and the Indian maharajas ( rulers ) unlikely collaboration led to their protracted stopover, which produced some of India’s finest works of art that combines Western aesthetics with Indian iconography.

Numerous Indian princes commissioned Norblin to paint their houses and even create their designs in the art deco style, a modernist aesthetic that celebrates innovation and technology, between 1941 and 1946.

Norblin rose to the occasion by displaying his distinctive incorporated fashion, which included beautifully painted paintings of Hindu angels, full scenes from Hindu epics Mahabharata and Ramayana, and even the nation’s renowned tigers, leopards, and elephants.

His drawings can be found in the Umaid Bhawan Palace in Rajasthan, the former royal residence of the noble state of Jodhpur, as well as the Morbi state leaders ‘ house, both of which have since been converted into luxury hotels.

He even painted photos for the Maharaja of Ramgarh in Bihar express, but these artworks have been lost to time, says Claus-Ullrich Simon, an analyst on Norblin, in Chitraanjali- a film which chronicles the author’s works in India.

His paintings are great and radiant, infused with a sense of movement and feelings. They incorporate contemporary Hindu imagery, including the postures and features of Hindu gods, with modern interpretations of the art deco style, such as minimalist, extended human figures, geometric shapes, and bold colors.

Norblin was born in 1892 in Warsaw into a rich family of entrepreneurs. His parents sent him to Antwerp, Belgium to examine business because he wanted to start a business. But Norblin’s passions lay in mural, a protein he probably inherited from his great-uncle who was a son of a popular Flemish artists.

In the article The Accidental Return of Stefan Norblin, Agnieszka Kasprzak cites a fresh Norblin as having left his experiments and traveling to Europe where he had travelled to numerous museums and created images for publications in Belgium, France, and England.

After moving back to Warsaw, he began to work as a graphic designer, period designer, and book illustrator, and his social elites slowly started to follow him. Norblin was best known for his photographs.

He met and married Lena, his second family, in 1933 and the significant partners lived a comfortable living in Warsaw. However, World War Two forced them to leave their home and travel to the coasts of remote India.

The couple first arrived in Bombay ( now Mumbai ) in British India, and were greeted by a confluence of cultures, religions and languages, says architect Rahul Mehrotra in Chitraanjali. The couple moved into their house, and Norblin began to exhibit his artwork in prestigious museums, drawing in wealthy customers.

The art deco style was a popular fashion in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, but it had not yet permeated India’s structural environment. However, some of India’s rulers ‘ children were exposed to the art when they traveled abroad to study.

And therefore, when Maharaja Mahendrasinhji’s boy was building a new house in Morvi ( then Morbi )- which he christened The New Palace- he wanted it designed and furnished in the art deco style.

He gave Norblin the task of beautifying the place’s designs with his drawings. The artist created huge murals that depicted hunting scenes, the Hindu god Shiva who was killed in prayer, a portrait of the leader’s ancestors, and other imagery that captured the area’s flora and fauna. His individual characters have a mix of dark and light tans and a spiritual, nymph-like value.

Umaid Singh, the artist’s following major project, requested Norblin to design and decorate the interiors of the royal house in Jodhpur. According to Kasprzak in her papers, Polish Artist At The Service of Maharajas, the request was perhaps the outcome of a freight incident that caused the king to lose the equipment they had ordered from London.

In the towering Umaid Bhawan Palace, one can see some of Norblin’s best creations. His paintings of the princess Durga, who is frequently depicted riding a lion and killing a demon, are the most engrossing. Additionally, the queen is depicted as having many arms and a deadly weapon.

In one of Norblin’s drawings of Durga, the queen looks almost like an Egyptian princess, in another, stroke of black ink give form to the queen, making her look almost like a dark streaking across the walls.

In one of the rooms known as the Oriental Room, Norblin has created a series of six murals that depict significant events from the Ramayana, including the queen Sita being abducted by the beast monarch Ravana and her entering the fire to show her virginity to her spouse, Lord Ram. Norblin has also designed full areas in the house, including the queen’s and bride’s suites, the sitting area and dining places.

Over time, some of Norblin’s drawings were damaged due to a lack of care, heat and humidity, but they have now been restored by the Polish state. Although his plays have been displayed in Poland and India, few people are aware of them. The artist possibly did that because he had left India for America and had not experienced the same level of success.

The artistic community in San Francisco, where the family set up home, was not as welcoming of the Polish artist. He was given a few commissions, and after a while, he stopped painting because his vision began to deteriorate as a result of glaucoma. His wife, once a famous actress, took up work as a manicurist in a beauty salon to support them.

Norblin fell into depression as a result of the family’s struggle to make ends meet. In 1952, the artist took his own life, not wanting to become a burden on his family. With his death, the legacy of his paintings in India slipped into oblivion, until they were re-discovered by Claus-Ullrich Simon in the 1980s.

Since then, a lot has been done to bring the artist’s work back into the spotlight, but a lot more remains to be done.