Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Big names, beautiful works

It's a rich medley of paintings at an exhibition in the city

SUBTLE AND SOBER Basuki Dasgupta's `Tiger and Moon'

It is a collection of paintings, mostly by well-known names in the Indian art scene that shares space on the walls of the Sri Parvati Art Gallery on Eldams Road. With little space for the viewer to have any respite from one beautifully worked canvas to the next, there is undeniably an overload of brilliant art on display. The roll call lists names such as Achuthan Kudallur, Yusuf Arakkal, Vaikuntam, Adimoolam, C. Douglas, Prabhakar Kolte, Paritosh Sen and Laxma Goud. Veteran septuagenarian artist A. P. Santhanaraj's painting includes, as is customary, his signature female form, but here in this recently painted canvas, she is deprived of the habitual sensuousness. Lost in the vivid red of the background, she exists as broken lines emerging from within the depths of the darkness at the centre.

Yusuf Arakkal's `Thoughts' bespeaks soul searching. Worked in monochrome, the form emanates despair, not just in his forlorn seated figure but also in the intersecting planes that comprise the background. The undisclosed self is mirrored once in the figure and yet again in the shattered space that he inhabits.

Pleasing palette

But it is not just big names alone that feature in this exhibition. The relatively lesser-known Basuki Dasgupta's subtle and sober `Tiger and Moon' is almost hidden amongst the numerous paintings at the gallery. Fashioned by using cut-outs placed on board which are then painted with acrylics, this alumnus of Shantiniketan manages to construct simple figuration in relief. The pleasing palette of olive green, black and muted orange in combination with deceptive naïveté in employing forms makes this work alluring.

Abstraction exists in the works of artists with lineage such as Harsha Vardhan, son of the renowned J. Swaminathan, as well as in the work of young Anil Gaikwad. The former's light hued canvas with angular forms contrasts adeptly with Gaikwad's passionate blues and greens suggestive of a landscape. Figuration also finds its place in the works of Senathipathi, Jehangir Jani, Anjani Reddy, Prakash Karmarkar and many more along with the variations on `The Last Supper' theme by both Suriyamoorthy and Alphonso Arul Doss. While there is a plethora of fine paintings in this collection, they do not fall into any consistent category, except for their having been done by Indian artists. Such a grouping is typologically too vast to hold this show together. Astute curating with a taxonomical emphasis could indeed have bettered the viewer's experience given the limited space, but the show is indeed worthwhile for the art collector who gets the opportunity to choose from a variety of styles.

This show is on at Sri Parvati Art Gallery at 28/160, Eldams Road, until July 10, after which it moves to Prakrit Art Gallery, 27 B, First Cross Street, Raja Annamalaipuram.

SWAPNA SATHISH

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail