Nek Chand

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Nek Chand Saini (1924–) is an Indian self-taught artist, famous for building the Rock Garden of Chandigarh, India, a forty-acre (160,000 m²) sculpture garden in the city of Chandigarh. His family moved to Chandigarh in 1947 during the Partition. At the time, Chandigarh was being redesigned as a modern utopia by the French architect Le Corbusier. It was to be the first planned city in India, and Chand found work there as a roads inspectors for the Public Works Department in 1951.

In his spare time, Chand began collecting materials from demolition sites around the city. He recycled these materials into his own vision of the divine kingdom of Sukrani, choosing a gorge in a nearby forest for his work. The gorge had been designated as a land conservancy, a forest buffer established in 1902 that nothing could be built on. Chand’s work was illegal, but he was able to hide it for eighteen years before it was discovered by the authorities in 1975. By this time, it had grown into a twelve-acre complex of interlinked courtyards, each filled with hundreds of pottery-covered concrete sculptures of dancers, musicians, and animals.

His work was in serious danger of being demolished, but he was able to get public opinion on his side, and in 1976 the park was inaugurated as a public space. Nek Chand was given a salary, a title ("Sub-Divisional Engineer, Rock Garden"), and a workforce of 50 laborers so that he could concentrate full-time on his work. It even appeared on an Indian stamp in 1983. The Rock Garden is still made out of recycled materials; indeed, with the government’s help, Chand was able to set up collection centers around the city for waste, especially rags and broken ceramics.

When Chand left the country on a lecture tour in 1996, the city withdrew its funding, and vandals attacked the park. The Rock Garden Society took over the administration and upkeep of the world’s largest visionary environment. The garden is visited by over five thousand people daily, with a total of more than twelve million visitors since its inception.

Chand's statues have found their way into museums across the world, including an environment at the Capitol Children’s Museum in Washington, DC, and the American Folk Art Museum in New York City. There is even a Nek Chand Foundation[1] in London founded to raise funds for the garden.

An exhibition of Nek Chand's work will also take place at the RIBA gallery in Liverpool, UK [April 16th - May 11th 2007]. The exhibition will display survey drawings of the garden's architecture and landscaping.