notes that call YOUR intervention:

These are short notes on some Indian Artists.
They're not biographical notes, nor are they complete appreciatory notes.
These are jottings, and I'd luv and respect your suggestions.
please comment.


MF HUSSAIN (1915- )

Verve and vigour define his line. His energy ascertains itself thoughcolour. The texture coincides his chiseled looks. M F Hussain (born1915) is more than this. He is perhaps synonymus with India’s modernpainting. Here’s a visual artist who experimented with many otherfields, cinema and even writing. While his experimentation withinpainting now has been focused to the subject he chooses, this founderof the ‘Progressive Artists Group’ has already come a long way, fromcurves to cuts. The drama of being Hussain, at 88, takes new turns!

PARITOSH SEN (1918-)

Paritosh Sen’s career as an artist, teacher and scholar sprawls overdecades, he has worked in cities of India and Europe alike. As afounder of the Calcutta Group (1943), Sen sought newer trends than therevivalist, orientalist styles prevalent in Bengal. In the process,Sen gave voluminous quality to the line drawing. Picasso and hiscubism impressed sen, but Sen’s own sense of satire, irony and hissensuous quality are unique. An octogenarian Sen, refuses to grow old!

SYED HAIDER RAZA (1922 -)

This octagenarian who lives in france, has been the source of Urja(energy) to the tantric metaophysical painting in India. He sharessecrets of life in its etenity, with Geometrical shapes and customarycolour. His journey as a founder of the Progressive Artists Group andas a profane expressionist, also finds a place in his later ode to thesacred : his stokes are still unmistakble.

RAM KUMAR (1924-)

Training in Paris under the two Moderns : Andre Lhote and FernandLeger in the 1950s, did influence Ramkumar, a youg Economics graduate,to depict his society and its predicament. Later, for more than thelast 45 years, he paints landscapes. His compulsive passion to paintflows over boundless terrains. Benares ghat-scapes paved the way forhis spiritual leanings toward white, gray, turquoise and ochre. Adefined pallette has meant freedom for an intellectual Ramkumar. He,with his abstract landscapes, opens up the inner spaces for theviewer.

KRISHEN KHANNA (1925-)

Mumbai gave him artist friends like Hussain, Ara and Bal Chhabda, andthe decisive moment to give up a banker’s job for full-time pursuit ofart. Khanna, known for his bold, guestural strokes, has undoubtedlyopened new horizons for the figurative art in Contemporary India. Hiseclectic style, say critics, ‘breaks away from the traditional notionsto achieve an even more radical position’. Thought his mid-careerseries of Bandwallas was in vibrant colours, Khanna has never forgonehis monocromic pallette.

SATISH GUJRAL (1925-)

Texture is an overture for Satish Gujral. It precedes his symphony ofline, form and colour. He sings the song of worldly and metaphysicalpresence, with a favorite theme of man and animal. Altough his presentsyle is pictorial figurative, Gujral is known for his sctulpuralabstractions as well as his architecture.

AKBAR PADAMSEE (1928-)

Creativity is not momentary. It’s a process of doing. Doing what youare and becoming you. Akbar Padamsee’s ink drawings as well as hislate oils may seem austere, yet they have an abundance of action.Philosophical quest has often lead artists to abandon figuration andexplore the non-representative; but Padamsee stands as a gracefulexception. In his journey from ‘Metascapes’ of the 1970s and 80s,Padamsee has abstracted the process of abstraction into ‘doing’.Padamsee, a believer and practitioner of the Indian RASA theory ofæsthetics, has his signature heads, nudes or human bodies, ametaphysical presence.

JERAM PATEL (1930-)

For Jeram Patel, who was trained as a typographer in London, it musthave been a process of unlearning when he arrived at his abscractform. Though the las 40 years, he has explored the possibilities ofcontent with from and technique. The rustic, expressionist, charcoliccloud in his work has always retined the potential of an IndianHarvest of abstraction. Patel, a founder of the “group 1890”, stillretains the vigour in his work.

LALITA LAJMI (1932-)

Relationships form the text and context for Lalita Lajmi. Hermetaphorical use of details in a building, aminals like cat amuses aswell as enlighten the viewer. Her watercolours have always, for thelast 30-odd years, been lucid and flowing, exploring and documentingthe familial and social values today.

VED NAYAR (1933-)

The elongated form that surpasses giocometti’s existentialism for Hopein Indian philosophy, marks Ved Nayar’s colourful paintings. Hisplayful, instinctive use of colour and space is remarkable, while hisintrovert content emanates from the painter’s ascetic personality.

SHYAMAL DUTTA RAY (1934-)

He used water colour as expressively as oils, without compromising thefuild, transparent quality of the medium. Today, he has proved atrend-setter. No wonder he has many successors, of sorts. ShyamalDutta Ray is at the helm of art from Bengal, and his appeal crossesgeographical boundries.

GANESH HALOI(1936- )

His closer inspections of Ajanta frescos facilitated hiscontemplations of texture. Ganesh Haloi stands tall in an otherwisefigurative contemporary art sceario from Bengal. A trueabstractionist, he makes his own terrain with line, colour andtexture.

GANESH PYNE (1937-)

The Line, in Ganesh Pyne’s work, is straight and impulsive. It is hisstream-of-thought, multidirectional visual contemplations which turnlines into image, for him. His line reign supreme over skeletal formsand austere use of colour.

JOGEN CHOWDHARY (1939- )

Sarcastic, commentative figures is his customaty double-hatchtechnique are quintessential to Jogen Chowdhary’s ouvre. His laterwork deals with more painful human conditions, but there is acontinuous stream of his india ink drawings that explores the existentbeauty.

MANU PAREKH (1939-)

Vigorous, impulsive and exressive strokes define his art. Vibrantcolour in his painting is unmistakably coupled with virile, manlyexpression of line and form. The natural forces are omnipresent in hiswork. Content is never a foreign proposition for Manu Parekh : it isinnate, with every stroke.

BOSE KRISNAMMACHARI ( 1962-)

Life in the city, the company of books, and the lives of Artists are the intellectual passions for Bose Krishnammachari. This JJ School of Art graduate has been among the vanguards of postmodern painting in India. His unmistakable riot of colour, now embodied in his untitled works, was in the centre of his installations as well, while his meticulous figurative work would have a context. This intellectual element, however, never stops a viewer from enjoying a Bose work!

SANJEEV SONPIMPARE (1969-)

Sanjeev, with his keen interest in the paradoxes and dissonaces of life - here and now- believes in a conceptual consistency of the eternal. Clarity of Thought and action guides his creativity. His recent works speak about the predicament of the city life.

RIYAS KOMU (1971-)

Committment to humanity has driven Komu to observe life. While his works as a student at the JJ School of Art had a strong and often direct political content, his paintings now point to a global reality of opresseion and resistance. Life flows, and so flows history. Komu in his role as an iconographer of Human Life, also makes exellent use of signage. His recourse to Brügel or his quest for Ravi Varma has been seen occasionaly in his works, but clearly, his grasp of history is not occasional.

Pradeep Mishra.

He wants real people; and not the habituated 'art public' to see his work. Sensing the suffocation and staleness in the air, Pradeep Mishra, a young post-graduate from JJ school of art, tries to infuse new breath in it. Pradeep, who just finished is journey from extrovert pastiche to introvert imagery, is now conscious about the signified.