Oral history interview with Suhrid and Asha Sarabhai, 2015

Biographical Note

Suhrid Sarabhai is a member of the Sarabhai family of India, the son of Manorama Sarabhai, whose Villa de Madame Manorama Sarabhai in Ahmedabad, India, Robert Rauschenberg visited with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1964. In 1975, Rauschenberg returned to Ahmenabad to work at the Sarabhai family's Calico Textile Mills. Asha Sarabhai is a fashion designer and founder of Raag Studios in Ahmedabad, India, and is married to Suhrid Sarabhai

Scope and Contents

Asha and Suhrid Sarabhai discuss the intersections between members of their family, including Gita Sarabhai's friendship with John Cage and David Tudor, and Gautam, Gita, and Gira's friendship with Rauschenberg in the late forties and early fifties. Suhrid recalls Alexander Calder's visit to their family in 1955, when he assisted the artist by bending wires for his mobiles. Asha recalls her mother's invitation to Le Courbusier to redesign the family compound following his visit to Punjab to design the new capital city of Chandigarh. She recalls Ray and Charles Eames' visit to set up an industrial design institute. Suhrid recalls the Merce Cunningham Dance Company's visit to Ahmedabad during their world tour in 1964 and seeing all the performers stand in silence for an entire dance; it was at this time that Rauschenberg made his first piece, a solvent transfer using magazines, for the family. The two discuss Rauschenberg's 1975 visit, on which they gave him unrestricted access to the Kalam Kush paper mill, leading to the Bones and Unions series, and then a number of works inspired by the textile mill in Ahmedabad, including the Jammer series. They discuss the documentation of this time by Gianfranco Gorgoni, with which Suhrid assisted. They discuss Rauschenberg's easy rapport with the family and staff who assisted on his projects and how Ahmedabad itself inspired Rauschenberg with new forms for his work. They discuss seeing Rauschenberg in Venice and then again in the mid-1980s during a visit to Captiva

Subjects

• Ahmadābād (India)
• Artistic collaboration.
• Calder, Alexander, 1898-1976.
• Captiva Island (Fla.)
• Eames, Charles.
• Eames, Ray.
• Gorgoni, Gianfranco.
• Interviews.
• Le Corbusier, 1887-1965.
• Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Paper mills--India.
• Rauschenberg, Robert, 1925-2008.
• Sarabhai, Asha--Interviews.
• Sarabhai, Asha interviewee.
• Sarabhai, Suhrid--Interviews.
• Sarabhai Foundation.
• Study of contemporary textile crafts of India.
• Textile factories--India.
• Vanderscoff, Cameron interviewer.
• Woven textiles--India.

Access Conditions

Copyright by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York and Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, 2015