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temple or an unadorned wooden image of a tribal god... his enthusiastic hand would never stop sketching people and places and objects that caught his imagination and he was never satisfied with what he had done or achieved. His monumental work 'Roop Samhita' is highly acciaimed as an encyclopaedia of designs. The seed of this work was perhaps sown in the mind of the artist when he was making sketches of the wooden lattices with intricately reticulaed designs at the Chintamani temple in early fifities. This voluminous work contains more than 2000 thousand designs collected and preserved with meticulous care over decades. The work, with hardly any comparable parallel in India, is a rare achievement in itself.
Vasudeo Smart brought to light and introduced to the outside would the arttreasures hidden in the Jain temples of South Gujarat for the first time in his books Bharat na Bhit Chitro (The Murals of India) and Kala Darpan and various articles published in 'Kumar' and other periodicals. Sometimes he urged the trustees to see that rare artefacts are not lost or damaged at the time of renovating an old temple or constructing a totally new one at the site of the old one. He wrote articles to make people aware of the loss such a carelessness would entail. Sometimes he would make use of his personal relations and appeal his friends to purchase a pat or a wooden sculpture from a demolished temple. And thus he did all that he could to help preserve these treasures.
I have been an assistant and an associate to this great artist for more than 35 years. I began working with him in 1977 when he was making copies of the murals of Kusum Sarovar Govardhan in Mathura and I continued to work with him till 1994-95 when he was making copies of the pat paintings in the temple of Shri Chandraprabhu. I have immensely benifitted from my association with him. What I am today and what I have achieved so far can easily be traced back to my long and intimate association with him.
Vakbaras, November, 12, 2001 Surat
Jagdeep Smart
Jain Kashthapat Chitra : 17
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