Just a day ago, visuals of the life-like statue of a woman sitting on an ornate white sofa went viral on social media. The statue was installed by 57-year-old Srinivas Gupta from Koppal, in memory of his late wife MVK Madhavi after her unfortunate demise three years ago. The striking semblance of the statue to a living human being left people speechless. The intricate craftsmanship was from the artisans at Bengaluru’s famous Gombe Mane.
Run by renowned sculptor M Sridhar Murthy, Gombe Mane was started only in 2017. Sridhar, who hails from a lineage of sculptors, talks animatedly about his ancestors, many of whom he claims were artisans in courts of Mysuru kings. “We’ve been in this business for over 200 years now. My grandfather used to tell us stories about our family history and how our ancestors were sculptors in Hampi during the Vijayanagara empire,” Sridhar recounts.
.jpg?w=640&auto=format%2Ccompress)
Picture courtesy: Sridhar Murthy
Picture courtesy: Sridhar Murthy
Sridhar claims that his great grandfather, Thippaji, was a noted artist in the court of Tipu Sultan. “When Tipu Sultan visited Shikaripur in the late 1700s, my great grandfather was just 12 years old. He painted the king’s procession and sent it to him. My grandfather told us that Tipu was so impressed that he commissioned his portrait from my great grandfather, who painted two identical ones. One was given to Tipu and one was kept at home. We still have that painting with us. After Tipu’s death, my great grandfather went on to become an artist in Mummudi Krishnaraj Wodeyar’s court,” Sridhar adds.
Picture courtesy: Sridhar Murthy
A civil engineering graduate, Sridhar remembers feeling listless after college. His true passion was in art and he decided to apprentice under his father Kashinath.
Native to Shivamogga district’s Shikaripur, Sridhar studied fine arts in Bengaluru’s Chitrakala Parishad in the late 80s whilst simultaneously apprenticing under his father, who was then popularly known as Shilpi Kashinath.
“My father was a very renowned sculptor. He was the one who did most of the work on the Shiva statue in Murudeshwar. My father received the Janakachari Award and the Rajyotsava Award for his work. He was trained by my grandfather while my grandfather himself learnt the art from his father Parashuramappa, who was also a celebrated sculptor of his time. We come from a family of painters and sculptors,” Sridhar Murthy tells TNM.
Sridhar’s attention to detail and dedication to researching every element has gained him a reputation of being a perfectionist. “I was sculpting along with my father, but in 2000 he died of a heart attack. Before that, I was just a sculptor in his factory. Suddenly I had to take up all the responsibility and live up to my father’s reputation,” Sridhar recalls.
Sridhar says that after his father’s demise, he continued sculpting the statue of Shiva and completed the work in late 2000. It was installed at Murudeshwar in 2004. Word of his exceptional work spread and soon he was commissioner to sculpt many statues by the Karnataka Tourism Department. He is also noted for his work along with his father on the statue of Shiva at the temple located behind Kemp Fort in Bengaluru. “People began recognising my art and I began receiving a lot of orders to sculpt huge statues,” Sridhar says.
Among the many sculptures that he has carved include the Basaveshwara statue in Gadag. The statue sits in the middle of a lake and is one of Sridhar’s proudest achievements. With his success, he began receiving commissions from across the country. He sculpted the 85 ft statue of Shiva in Sikkim’s Solophok Centre and the 85 ft Hanuman statue in Chaitanya City in Madhya Pradesh. The Central government commissioned his services to install the bronze statue of Basaveshwara in London.
Sridhar and his family moved to Bengaluru in 2010 and rented a house in JP Nagar. At the time, Sridhar was scouting for plots of land to set up a factory and found the perfect site in Peenya. He constructed a home and also a factory adjacent to it, where all the sculpting work is carried out.
“We have apprenticeship programmes where we train around 1,000 artisans every year. It is a one or two year apprenticeship programme. We are more than happy if they decide to work for us after the training, but the reason for starting the school is so that others can also start their own business and make a name for themselves,” Sridhar says.
While the factory was kickstarted in late 2011, Sridhar says that the area surrounding his house was popularly known as Gombe (doll) factory. Christened by the locals, he decided to market his business better and Gombe Mane was thus formed in 2017. “Since the locals already knew it as Gombe factory, we decided to name the company Gombe Mane. The biggest challenge for us is to keep up with new forms of sculpting, using new materials and experimenting with it,” he says.
In 2018, on a trip to Singapore Sridhar visited the Madame Tussauds wax museum. Impressed by the life-like statues, he decided to experiment with wax statues. However, he was stuck with a conundrum – how to make a statue that is more durable and requires lesser maintenance?
“Wax statues need to be installed in temperature controlled environments. The maintenance costs are too high. The first one I did was of Siddalingeshwara Swami of Tontadarya Mutt in Gadag. That’s when my friend and sculptor Anand suggested we begin research and development into making statues with different materials. Hailing from Belagavi, Anand studied at the Davangere School of Arts,” Sridhar adds.
It was then that the two friends decided to use silicone, which can withstand high temperatures. However, the material is extremely flexible and could not be used on its own. “We decided to use fiberglass as a skeleton for the silicone. First a mould is made with clay or plaster of paris and then the fiberglass is poured over the mould to set. We use this as the skeleton and add the sculpted silicone on top of the fiberglass. That’s what we did for Srinivas in Koppal,” Sridhar says.
With the challenges of using new materials and constantly evolving sculpting techniques, Sridhar hopes to chisel out “realistic art”.
“Change is constant and as an artist, adopting new technologies and materials for sculpting is challenging but it pays off when we create something beautiful,” he adds.