About the Artist: Markand Thakar (1929 - 2012)
The autobiography of an artist is his lifework. This website was created as a catalog of Markand Thakar's lifework; the art should speak for itself. But, by not divulging the details that make up one's life-story it is possible that an invented one will prevail - one with untold, imaginary, unflattering or romanticized skeletons in an artist's closet. Before his death, Markand Thakar "turned the light on" in his closet and provided the following history:
"I've been asked on numerous occasions to explain the origins of my name and of my antecedents; just how did my parents, being of such different backgrounds, manage to meet?
My name, Markand Thakar, has Indian roots. My father, Nainsink Thakar, was born in 1883 in Gujarat, India. My father's Kshatriya Hindu Indian family owned a shipping line that travelled between Kuchchh, Mandvi and Zanzibar. Upon the death of his parents, he sold the remnants of his family's firm, and shortly after the turn of the century arrived in America. He served as a censor in obscure languages with the US Censors during World War I. He met my mother, a college student 10 years younger than he, at a function sponsored by Columbia and International House, where my father resided. My mother, Lena Gottlich, was born in Belgium. Her parents disowned and disinherited her for having married my Hindu father. Although it was my father's wish to return to India, the effects of the Great Depression, his ill health and eventual death in 1937 (when I was eight years old), he never did. And, I was not to set foot in India until 1991.
During World War II my three older brothers were drafted. I dropped out of high school shortly after I turned seventeen, enlisted in the Regular Army and served in the post-WWII occupation of Japan. After my discharge, I worked at numerous jobs: soda jerk, bank page, railroad dock worker, apprentice machinist, and model maker - all the while involved in the making of art. In 1953, I became a licensed customhouse broker and registered foreign freight forwarder in order to support my wife, Betty nee Huber, and our three children. After twenty years I sold my business, and my wife supported the family so that I was able to focus full-time on the works of art depicted on this website."
During his lifetime, Mr. Thakar's work was exhibited in several shows in Soho and small college museums throughout the country.