Syed Haider Raza Painter

S.H. Raza was born as Syed Haider Raza in the year 1922, in the state of Madhya Pradesh. One of the most distinguished artists of the Indian subcontinent, Raza has been settled in France since 1950. However, his ties with India remain as strong as ever. The paintings of Syed Haider Raza have been done mainly in oil or acrylic and have a very heavy usage of color. His wife is a French artist, Janine Mongillat. Know more about the biography and life history of S.H. Raza with this article:

Raza received his formal training in painting at the Nagpur School of Art (Nagpur) and Sir J. J. School of Art (Mumbai). During his stay at the Sir J.J. School, he became a member of Progressive Artist Group. At that time, SH Raza experimented with the Western Modernism, which was moving away from expressionism and towards abstraction. Thereafter, he shifted to France to pursue his studies at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts of Paris. The paintings of Syed Haider Raza in the 1940s and 1950s revolved mainly around landscapes.

His Style The paintings of S.H. Raza revolve mainly around nature and its various faucets. His paintings have evolved from being purely expressionist landscapes to abstract ones. He believes the Bindu (dot) to be the center of creation and existence and his works reflect this particular thinking. Even though the vibrancy of his paintings has become subtle, the dynamism remains as alive as ever.

Achievements A painting by S.H. Raza was reportedly sold for US $1.4 million at an auction held in December 2006. In Feb 2007, his works were exhibited in The Arts Trust - Institute of Contemporary Indian Art (Mumbai). He became India's priciest modern artist on June 10, 2010 when a seminal work, 'Saurashtra' by the 88- year-old sold for Rs 16.42 crore ($3,486,965) at a Christie's auction.

Recognition S.H. Raza was awarded the prestigious Padma Shree by the Government of India in the year 1981. He is also a Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi of New Delhi. The government of Madhya Pradesh has awarded him the Kalidas Samman.

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Anjolie Ela Menon Painter

Anjolie Ela Menon is among India's lending contemporary female artists, who have created a name for themselves in the domestic as well as international art scenario. Her works are a part of significant painting collections across the globe. One of her art works, 'Yatra' was recently picked up by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco at California in the year 2006. Anjolie Ela Menon normally prefers to work with the oil on masonite medium, though she has also worked with other mediums like glass and water color.

She was born in the year 1940 in the Indian state of West Bengal of a mixed Bengal and American parentage. She was a student of Lawrence School, Lovedale situated in the lovely hills of Nilgiri, Tamil Nadu. Anjolie Ela Menon was so adept at painting that by the time she left school at the age of 15, she had already sold away few of her works.

After this, she pursued her studies at the Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art, Mumbai and then went on to obtain a degree in English Literature from Delhi University. During this phase, she developed a deep appreciation for the works of artists like Italian artist, Modigliani and Indian painters like Amrita Shergil and MF Hussain. It was at the tender age of 18 that Anjolie Ela Menon showcased her solo works. There were in total 53 paintings included in this exhibition.

The life history of Anjolie Ela Menon's career soared smoothly upwards in the time to come. Impressed by her creative adeptness, the French government offered her a scholarship to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. And Menon fully utilized this time to travel incisively in Europe and West Asia studying Romanesque and Byzantine art before returning back home to India. She later wedded her childhood love, Raja Menon, who was an officer in the Indian navy.

After her marriage to Raja Menon, Anjolie Ela Menon has stayed and worked on in India, US as well as other countries in Europe and Japan. She is credited to have had over 30 solo shows in all these countries. She is also a well-known muralist and been honored with the Padma Shree, one of the highest civilian awards in India. Based on her life and work, a book "ANJOLIE ELA MENON: Paintings in Private Collections" was recently published.

Jadu

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Satish Gujral

Born On: 25 December 1925 Born In: Jhelum, Pakistan Career: Painter, sculptor, muralist, graphic designer and architect

Satish Gujral was born in Jhelum, a small river town in Pakistan, formerly a part of undivided India. Gujral has gained a global recognition for his unmatched talents and creativity that cover a wide realm of art forms including painting, graphics, mural, sculpture, architecture and interior designing. Owing to his contributions to arts and artistic works, he has been hailed as a living legend within the art fraternity. He is one of those few great artists who have managed to etch an indelible impression in the realms of contemporary Indian art. Much of his artworks seem to have been inspired from Indian culture and tradition, Indian architecture and temple sculptures. The Belgium Embassy of New Delhi, which was selected as one of the 1000 best-built in 20th century by the "International Forum of Architects", is a perfect example of his superlative talent. Read on to learn more on the career, life and achievements of Satish Gujral.

Personal Life Satish Gujral was born on 25 December 1925 in Jhelum, formerly a part of undivided India. At a young age of eight, he met with an accident that impaired his hearing abilities for good. He lost his brother Raj in the mishap. May be it is the perpetual silence that surrounded him that helped him to discover the artistic talents in him. Driven by his interest in applied arts, he joined the Mayo School of Art in Lahore and mastered stone and woodcarving, clay modeling, drawing and design, scale drawing etc. In 1944, he joined Sir J.J. School of Art, Bombay to pursue painting and became a member of Progressive Artists Group (PAG). However, he could not get along with many of the PAG's concepts like absorbing the techniques of European Expressionism and Cubism. He wanted to develop some moderns techniques but without rooting out the art from Indian tradition and culture.

Satish was badly affected by recurring illness and had to discontinue his studies. He got a scholarship for apprenticeship with famous Mexican painters Diego Rivera and David Sequeiros and left to Mexico in the year 1952 to pursue the same. He was enrolled into Palacio Nationale de Belles Artes, Mexico. He became emotionally disturbed by the partition and his anger was expressed through paintings called 'Partition' that portrayed the pain of the nation who parted with their homes, families and friends during the partition.

He is married to Kiran and the couple has a son Mohit Gujral and two daughters Alpana Gujral and Raseel Gujral. Alpana is a jewelry designer and Raseel is an interior designer who owns the luxury store network called the Casa Paradox. Former Prime Minister of India Inder Kumar Gujral is the brother of Satish Gujral.

Career Satish Gujral is a sculptor, architect and a painter. In his paintings, he has tried to experiment with arts and to express his ideas in different ways. He conducted solo exhibitions of his work around the world from the year 1952 to 1974. Famous cities like Mexico City, New York, New Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Montreal, Rome, Berlin, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and Stockholm witnessed his exhibitions. He is a good writer as well and has published four books so far, including an autobiography called "A Brush With Life".

Contributions Satish Gujral is considered as one of the pioneers of Indian arts in post-independence era. He did murals for many establishments like Punjab University, Odeon Cinema in New Delhi, World Trade Fair in New York, Oberoi Hotel in New Delhi, Northern Railway in New Delhi, Ministry of Education in New Delhi, Agricultural University, Oberoi Towers in Bombay, The Palace of the Sultan of Muscat, Delhi High Court, Gandhi Institute in Mauritius etc. to name some.

He designed some important buildings as well. Some of them are Daryani House in New Delhi Modi House, Gandhi Institute, Datwani House, Belgian Embassy in New Delhi, and Dass House in New Delhi, Goa University, Palace AI-Bwordy in Dubai, the Indian Ambassador's house in Indonesia etc. to name some.

Awards and Accolades

• The National Award for Painting,1956 • National Award for Sculpture, 1972 • National Award for Sculpture, 1974 • State Honour from the Government of Punjab, 1979 • Order of the Crown, Belgium, 1983 • Leonardo Da Vinci Award, 1989 • Desikottama by Santiniketan,1989 • Honorary Doctorate, Vishakapatnam University, 1998 • Padma Vibhushan Award, second highest civilian award in India, 1999 • International award for Life Time Achievements (Mexico) • His name is written in the "International Dictionary of Art" published by Macmillan, U.K. • Honorary Doctorate, Visva Bharti University, 200 • Lalit Kala Ratna Puraskar, 2004 • Honored at Golden Jubilee Celebration of National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), 2005 • 2010 Amity Lifetime Achievement Award for art, Amity School of Fine Arts

Timeline 1925: Born in Jhelum, Pakistan 1944: Joined J.J. School of Art, Bombay 1947: Discontinued from J.J. School of Art, Bombay due to recurring illness 1952: Left for Mexico 1956: Won national Award for painting 1972: Won Order of the Crown from Belgium 1999: Was honored with the Padma Vibhushan Award

Baaz Bahadur

------Jatin Das Painter

Jatin Das was born in the year 1941 in the Mayurbhanj district of Orissa. He is counted amongst the most creative artists of India and is proficient in painting, graphic art, sculpture, murals and even poetry. Jatin Das received training in the field of art at Sir J. J. School of Art in Bombay. His term at the school lasted for a period of five years, from 1957 to 1962. Thereafter, he started participating in the art exhibitions, both at the national as well as the international level. Some important exhibitions where he participated include the Biennales in Paris (1971), and in Venice (1978) and the Documenta in Kessel (1975). Read on to explore the life history and biography of Jatin Das:

Professional Life During the period of 1965 to 1991, Jatin Das organized thirty-seven solo exhibitions, both national and international. He also attended twelve artist camps and four workshops and even offered his amazing art works at fourteen charity shows in India. Fourteen limited editions of his theme-based graphics and conte drawings have been taken out in India, Germany and U.K. Jatin Das served as the Consultant to the Handicraft Board for the seven northeastern states in India, for the 'Festival of India' organized in Russia.

He taught at the Jamia Milia Islamia University, School of Planning and Architecture and the prestigious National School of Drama. Jatin Das has also been on the jury for the National Film Festival. He is one of the founder members of 'The Poetry Society', New Delhi. Jatin Das has also executed exquisite murals for numerous public as well as private buildings. Presently, he is living and working in the capital city of India, New Delhi.

His Style Jatin Das comes across as an innovative artist who always tries to find new and dynamic ways of depicting human figures. His paintings mainly revolve around the various aspects of a man-woman relationship, such as crisis, contacts, disclosures, emotional tensions, etc. The treatment of human forms in the paintings of Jatin Das is exceptionally great and the colors seem to be charged with the emotional tinges. The linear arrangement and brisk brushwork further add a unique dimension to his paintings.

Poise

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Akbar Padamsee Painter

Though very meticulous in his method, master colourist Akbar Padamsee’s drawings and paintings pulsate with throbbing energy. This is an artist whose work ranges from the figure to non-figuration; for Padamsee it not the categorization of his work which is of consequence, but rather its relationships with form, volume, space, time, and colour. He is acutely aware of every brush stroke; the process of creation is one of contemplation and articulation of thoughts and ideas.

Padamsee’s pioneering spirit has allowed him to experiment with a wide range of mediums: the gamut of the traditional ones to his recent experiments with photography and digital printmaking. Whatever his chosen medium, the artist conveys a command over space, form and colour. Although he is best known as a painter, Padamsee has experimented with film-making, sculpture, and writing as an art critic as well. His formal education was in the fine arts – Padamsee graduated from the Sir J.J. School of Art in 1940, with a diploma in painting and series of sculpture classes behind him. In an interview with Dnyaneswar Nadkarni, he comments: “In those days, learning painting in that tree-studded campus was a heady experience.” An ex-professor from the school describes him as an “aristocratic intellectual, aloof from the usual hurly-burly of the school,” showing a rare seriousness and sense of direction as an artist.

The most familiar works from his extensive oeuvre are the metascapes and mirror images, and the figures and heads, which he keeps oscillating between. The metascapes are a development from landscapes, while the mirror images show his concern with the duality of existence, of form and space. The figure is treated not as an individual, not even in the heads where the association with portraiture is even stronger. The only occasion when he has handled portraits of known people, was in 1997, with his Gandhi series of works on paper in watercolour and charcoal.

Born in Mumbai in 1928, Akbar Padmsee has exhibited his works in several solo exhibitions, including most recently, ‘Sensitive Surfaces’ at Galerie Helene Lamarque, Paris, in 2008; ‘Metascape to Humanscape’ at Aicon Gallery, New York and Palo Alto, in 2007; and ‘Photographs (2004-06)’ at the Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai, in 2006. From 1994 onwards, Padamsee has held several solo shows at Pundole Art Gallery ,Mumbai, including ‘Tertiaries’, ‘Compugraphics’, ‘Imaging Gandhi’, ‘Female Nudes’, and ‘Mirror Images’. Padamsee’s first solo exhibition was held in Paris in 1952 at Galerie Saint Placide.

His recent group exhibitions include 'Progressive to Altermodern: 62 Years of Indian Modern Art' at Grosvenor Gallery, London, in 2009; 'Faces' at Tao Art Gallery, Mumbai, and ‘Freedom 2008 – Sixty Years of Indian Independence’ at the Centre for International Modern Art (CIMA), Kolkata in 2008. The exhibition, ‘Retrospective of Watercolors’, was held at Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai, in 2004, and another retrospective of his works organized by Art Heritage, New Delhi, in Mumbai in 1980. Padamsee was awarded the Lalit Kala Ratna from the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, in 2004, and the Kalidas Samman from the Madhya Pradesh Government in 1997.

The artist lives and works in Mumbai.

------A.V. Ilango Painter

A self-taught artist, A.V. Ilango made his debut in 1973 on completing his Masters in Mathematics at the Bangalore University.

Inspired by his childhood memories, he set off with a colourful palette.

From seven to sixteen years, he had spent his childhood in Gobichettipalayam, a market town in the hinterland of Tamil Nadu. It is situated in picturesque plains richly covered with paddy fields and coconut groves with the canal meandering lazily across the fields and the hazy blue mountains frame the backdrop. In the town, the white- washed houses with red-tiled roofs line the narrow streets.

Everyday life is orchestrated with agricultural activities, trade and also religious celebrations. Thus the harvest, fairs and festivals resound with folk songs, music and dances. People sing and dance, and patiently queue before the shrines. All their movements are tuned to the drumbeat and tinkling ankle bells. Clad in ochre dhotis, musicians and dancers enliven the crowd with leaps and swirls in ecstasy. The bright costumes, pulsating music, bellowing traders, echoing loud speakers… The artist vividly recalls those scenes on his canvas.

Married at 27 years, he migrated with his family from Bangalore to Madurai, the ancient seat of Dravidian culture. The architectural and sculptural splendors of Madurai temples fascinated him. He sketched in the Meenakshi temple to execute paintings in the pointillist style with monochrome tones highlighting granite texture. Nataraja, Meenakshi Kalyanam and Rathi were inspired by the elegance of medieval classical sculpture. The indelible impressions of festivals, fairs were rendered with bold impastos. The contrast of the ethnic colours accentuated the linear quality on his oil paintings – Karagam, Kavadi, Oyilattam to name a few of that early Utsav series.

In 1979, once again moving to Madras in the pursuit of his artistic career, he found this big city hardly inspiring. It is the modern cultural and industrial centre. The noise, traffic jams, pollution, squalor and stench of this urban environment resulted in the dismal tones of his oil paintings titled Aggression, Agony, Injustice, Ruins, Desert, Melancholy, etc. Willingly to emerge out of that depressive phase, he changed his subject to create the Rhythm 85 collection in joyous tones. At the end of the eighties, A. V. Ilango allowed the urban influences to gradually evoke vivid figurations of artisans, workers, beggars harmonized with auto-rickshaws, buses, lorries, cycles. Man, woman or a group of people at work, rest or in celebration, as subject of study, he preferred to depict the human form elegant, tanned in the bright Indian sun, robust in dhoti and sari. The female head and torso were rendered in rotund forms. Inspired from the marapachi doll (brown wooden doll) and the giant kaval deivam (terracotta village guardians), Ilango conceived his human forms to arrive at harmonious compositions. Light and dark tones were interlaced with subtle and bold lines. In the course of three decades, the residual forms, structural lines and monologous or analogous or complementary colour schemes culminated in his recent Women series.

The last decade saw his palette mellow.

The decorative elements disappeared.

Minimalist compositions were etched in the sublime harmony of black and white positive and negative spaces space and form.

Some works have caught the dramatic moment of an action. Whereas in others, forms merge into the space. The artist opines that his way of conceptualizing, as a mathematician, has contributed a lot to his artistic research. He values the linear quality in his oeuvre, and the development of a concept and the motif. Each theme evolves in such a way that the presentation is distinguished from period to period or at the same time.

Besides human figure, the artist has been studying for the past few years, the most familiar animals of the Indians. According to him, cows and bulls form the very idiom of primitive, folk and classical arts of India. The Indian species which inspire him are not robust, forming an angular structure. The horns are highlighted. Alone or in herd they are seen everywhere, in the countryside as well as in the metropolis. This series Bull and Beyond evoke meditative poses of bovine creatures rendered in earthy hues.

Now Ilango goes beyond the bull which is the mascot of Lord Shiva, called Nandhi. In hindu philosophy, the bull symbolizes the human prowess. In everyday life, it is used as beast of burden and for transport, sport, manure, hide, meat and milk. Many sketches and paintings bring out the subtle harmony in these compositions.

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