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This rare collection is made up of 160 works of concrete and fabric figures and animals created by self-taught artist Nek Chand. The works originate from his extraordinary 40-acre Rock Garden inhabited by some 10,000 sculptures in the Himalayan foothills of Chandigarh, India, where the Garden is second to the Taj Mahal in attracting tourists.
Driven by the belief that everything in nature transforms itself from one form into another -- nature's way of recycling -- Chand began to collect and sort the rocks, boulders, ceramic shards, bits of broken glass, jewelry, building waste, coal, and clay from the remains of destroyed villages to create a Rock Garden "kingdom," his personal dream and offering to the Supreme Being. The villages whose rubble Chand used to create the sculptures for the Garden were destroyed not only as a result of political upheaval but also to provide room for the development of a new city -- a European-style capital to represent the new India -- the city to which Chand had moved as part of the work effort on the project: Chandigarh.
The sculptures in this permanent collection were a gift to John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, through Kohler Foundation, Inc. The artist aided the Arts Center and the Foundation in the selection of these works so that his work could receive lasting care and be seen in significant groupings outside of India. The exhibition changes as sculptures come and go during the ongoing conservation effort.
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