I am finding it hard to do this column today. My mind is still involved with the thought that I do not have the right to call Husain, India’s best-known artist. For, he has finally decided that enough is enough and has given up his Indian citizenship. No doubt we will write about him again within this column, but not with the same feeling of ownership. I am sure there are countless people in India who feel the way I do.

But, enough of these unhappy thoughts. Let’s instead talk of how advertising man Charles Saatchi, born into a wealthy Jewish family in Baghdad, moved on to become Britain’s largest art collector. Saatchi’s highly successful global agency — Saatchi & Saatchi — was the largest in the world, which no doubt helped in his moving towards the finer things in life. Forced out of the company in 1995, he and his brother Maurice formed a new agency called M&C, which became so successful that they soon overtook the former. Charles is known to have bought his first painting when he visited Paris in 1973. It was a realistic painting of an urban city dwelling by British artist David Hephner. The Saatchi Gallery was established more than a decade later in 1985, during which period the now avid collector initiated himself into art of all kinds – moving from old school British to American Abstractionism to Minimalism and the works of young British painters such as Damien Hirst and others, who consider him their biggest patron.

His fame as a patron is said to have reached its zenith in 1997 when 110 works by 42 artists were shown at the Royal Academy as an exhibition titled ‘Sensation’, which then travelled on to Berlin and New York “causing headlines and offence”, but helping to consolidate the position of the young breed of British painters whose cause he has been championing for many years.

Saatchi’s Art Gallery moved to various locations before finally re-locating in Chelsea. Having been evicted by the landlord of the County Hall where Charles collection did not find favour, he is now more or less back in the ‘arty’ area of London. He is said to have lost 140 pieces of his art collection in a fire in 2004, but that did not deter him. The avid collector is busy bringing more interesting art from all over the world. At present, his exhibition of South Asian art offers works of 26 Indian artists. In this exhibition, interestingly titled, “The Empire strikes Back – Indian Art Today”, works of some of our more popular and better known modernists like Jitish Kallat, Atul Dodiya, Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher, Probir Gupta, Pushpamala N and a host of others can be seen. They can expect to be featured in reviews and sell their works – displayed as never before, spread in grand style across Saatchi’s latest gallery. I read somewhere that it was strange how much criticism Charles Saatchi had faced over the years, considering how much he has done for British art and art in general. Perhaps what is different about him is that he chose the new and lesserknown styles and the artists that created them, instead of conforming to what is accepted as ‘good art’. In this, we might say that he is only following what a good advertising man is trained to do. Find something different so it attracts attention and sells! (The writer is a painter and has won numerous adveritising design awards)