MODERN INDIAN ART

 TYEB MEHTA
 S.DHANAPAL
 A.P.SANTHANARAJ
 Tyeb Mehta was born in July 1925 in
Kapadvanj district of Gujarat. He is not
only one of the greatest artists of India
but also an acclaimed painter.
 After working as a film editor in a cinema laboratory, his interest in
painting led him to Sir J.J.School of Art, Mumbai from where he
graduated in 1952.To further his interest, he made a short visit of four
months to London and Paris.
 After his return, he focused intensely on the art of painting and
sculpture which saw him participating in many exhibitions. He
organized first solo exhibition of his art at the Jehangir Art Gallery,
Mumbai, in 1959.
 He is also a Recipient of Kalidas Samman by the Madhya Pradesh
Government in 1988. Truly, Mehta is a multi-faceted personality.
 In addition to a range of solo exhibitions, he has also participated in
several international shows too. Immaculate in nature, he is one of the
most influential artists of India.
 He has certainly contributed a lot for the art of painting and sculpture
in India by means of awareness and exposure.
 What makes Tyeb Mehta so renowned and hugely respected? The
answer lies in his works which are a clear reflection of supreme
authenticity and wonderful assortment of honesty and intent.
 Another distinct mark of his strong identity and proud national origin
is his affinity with mythological characters in his works. This not only
shows his knowledge about the Indian traditions but also explains a lot
about his commitment and consideration.
 His versatility is unmistakably reflected in, from painting images of
rickshaw-wallahs and the tethered bull, to intricate, encrusted images
and concepts of Hindu mythology.
 As a confirmation of his brilliance,
Mehta’s paintings fetch the maximum
prices of any living Indian artist.
 He possess the record for the highest price an Indian painting has ever
been sold in a public auction for “Celebration” at Christie’s, New York
in 2002.
 Adding to that his painting “Mahisasura,” brought $1.58 million , the
first time a modern Indian painting had crossed the million-dollar
mark.
 Tyeb Mehta’s hugely influential works, across six decades makes him
one of the supreme names in modern Indian art.
 At the forefront of rise of Indian art, his name will be etched in the
canals of great Indian artists.
 Born in Chennai in 1919, S. Dhanapal initially trained
in painting at the Government College of Art and Crafts
there.
 In 1941, he joined the institution as a faculty member,
and in 1957, he was appointed the Head of its sculpture department.
 Dhanapal was an influential painter and sculptor in post-Independence
India.
 His sculptures, in particular, served as a visual bridge between traditional
Eastern and the modern, ever changing Western aesthetic sensibilities.
 In 1966, along with K.C.S. Paniker, Dhanapal established the Cholamandal
Artists’ Village outside Madras.
 In 1977 he retired as principal from the Government College of Art and
Crafts, and in 1980 he won two fellowships from the Tamil Nadu Lalit Kala
Akademi and the Department of Culture of the Government of India.
 One among the many fine sculptors South India has produced, none is
truly more Indian than S. Dhanapal. He studied under D.P Roy
Chowdhury.
 Though he excelled in line drawing and impressionistic water colour
studies in time he left these behind to recognize his true love in
sculpture.
 He carefully studied Indian sculpture and found that the essence of
Indianness lay hidden in the arrangement of the subject, the
distribution of space, the rhythm of form, the expression of the shape
and its simplification.
 He made a closer study of the Chola and Pallava sculptures and the
sculptures Of Mathura and found that the Indian head studies were far
superior to those done by the sculptors of the European school.
 The treatment of volume and the directness of expression were unique.
He began breathing the Indian environment and developed a style
totally rooted in the soil.
 He had genuine talent and he inspired his
students with his power of draughtsmanship
and total command of the medium.
 Dhanapal’s sculptures are hymns to human form which in his hands
comes alive in all its sublime sensuousness.
 E.g. Mother and child, Avvaiyyar. He has exhibited his work in
Germany and England in the 1950s and 60s, and subsequently held
several other shows of his drawings, paintings and sculptures in India
and abroad.
 In 2007, a retrospective of 52 of his drawings was hosted by the Noble
Sage Art Gallery in London.
 Today, his works are part of several private collections as well as the
permanent collections of the National Art Gallery, Chennai, the
National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, and Parliament House,
New Delhi.
 Born in 1932 in Tamil Nadu, Schooled like many
artists of his generation in the academic style of
drawing.
 A.P Santhanaraj came under the powerful influence
of D.P. Roy Chowdhury, first as a student and later as a teacher.
 His preoccupation with the mastery of drawing was also a test of his own
ability to build up and acceptable medium of expression.
 A.P. Santhanaraj studied painting from Government College of Arts and
Crafts, Chennai, and was its Principal from 1985-1990.
 He has found himself a niche in the world of art with his passion and
distinctive style. One of the most defining aspects of Santhanaraj's works
would be the quality of line.
 It is this fundamental element, which sets apart the artists style. He uses
this element without any inhibitions exploring it endlessly and creating a
unique visual language.
 A.P. Santhanaraj is considered by many in South
India to be the most influential artist of the second wave
that followed K.C.S. Panicker and S. Dhanapal out of the
Madras College of Arts and Craft.
 Santhanaraj quickly forged an artistic style of his own
dedicated to ascertaining the various complexities of
pictorial space through abstract engagement with figurative subject matter.
 From student days, Santhanaraj would always approach a canvas with
passion, aggression and enthusiasm.
 At the age of 74, Santhanaraj experimented further with the concept of
abstraction first and, from this process, the emergence of unconscious
figuration.
 His paintings begin with the placement of random pieces of paper on the
canvas. These are moved around the pictorial space whilst the canvas itself
is intermittently rotated and inspected from all angles.
 “Colour” to Santhanaraj is very life. “Because colour is light, colour is
something I would like to live with.”
 The day he is convinced that he has suceeded in capturing (or converting)
light into colour, he would have reached his final goal.
 Colour is still second to line and when it arrives it is far-fetched, cheery and
only sometimes related to the arising shapes.
 Interestingly, the jagged shapes and lines combined with the fragmented
colour makes for a flatness similar to an ancient Indian wall painting where
the rock face (its lines, crevices and irregular formations) has an effect on
the painting created upon it.
 Santhanaraj’s art bears the stamp of his strong temperament, intense
vision and technical wizardry is virtually parallel creation which springs to
life through colour, form and texture.
 Santhanaraj is truly an artist gifted with extraordinary technical skills and
artistic sensibilities. He was recognized as an excellent draughtsman and a
painter of immense possibility from his early days.