Gujarat artist’s 100-foot mural of Gandhi adorns Noida housing society tower

GREATER NOIDA: As the entire country gets ready to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, a housing society in Greater Noida has also done its

GREATER NOIDA: As the entire country gets ready to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, a housing society in Greater Noida has also done its bit by roping in an artist from Gujarat to make a 100-foot-long wall painting of Bapu on the main building of the society.

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This housing society in Sector-Phi is being constructed for the government officials by the Central Government Employees Welfare Housing Organisation (CGEWHO). This painting is the biggest in Gautam Budh Nagar district, the housing society officials claimed.

Munir Bukhari, 50, who had been assigned the job to make this 100-foot-long mural on the 150-foot-high building, said to mark Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary, the society officials contacted him and he agreed to paint this impressionistic and surrealistic theme.

“Only three acrylic colours – black, yellow and blue – were used. Although painting at this height on swinging suspenders is always a tough task, but from the very beginning of this work, I had visualised the Mahatma besides me and painted the mural so that others can also feel the same as I did. Art for me is a pure form of emotion,” he said, after completing the grand painting on Tuesday afternoon.

He had started this artwork on September 27 this year and had only one assistant with him.

Munir has won accolades for his artwork in Delhi-NCR area on earlier occasions also. He had pained the 450-foot long walls of Feroz Shah Kotla stadium in Delhi and also the walls of the Metro stations in Gurugram and along the Barapullah flyover in Sarai Kale Khan, Delhi.

“I personally believe, whatever you feel — the mood and the ambience — the inner mind starts developing that into a painting. If you can feel the subject, it becomes easier to paint it. It happens, many a time, that when I just follow my instinct, it motivates me to paint. The painting captures my life energy in strokes and colours,” he said.

The project manager, DK Bhatia, of the housing society said as a token of respect to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary, CGEWHO chief executive officer Bhupinder Singh came up with the idea to get the mural done.

“It was also approved by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. Later, a technical committee was constituted and it was decided that the 100-foot mural should be made on the wall of the main building,” he said.