Coffee Morning with Ramachandran

What: Coffee morning with Ramachandran, celebrated artist
When: 18 November 2014, 12:30pm - 2.30pm
Where: Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi

The Vadhehra Art Gallery invited members of the Oxford and Cambridge Society of India for a coffee morning with Ramachandran, the celebrated artist, and Ranesh Ray, the curator at the Lalit Kala Akademi.

Born in Kerala 1935, Ramachandran studied art in Santiniketan where the cultural and intellectual milieu of Santiniketan drew him closer to the art traditions of India and other civilizations and began his lifelong research on mural paintings of Keralan temples.

The Retrospective is structured chronologically as well as thematically and moves from 1958 to the present, while Ekalinji Fantasy focuses on a more recent body of works. The artist comments on this body of work: “The large paintings and sculptures are centred around a small temple town Ekalinji, where the ancient ruined temples surrounded by Bhil villages have become a focal point for my work. The changing seasons, festivals and the lives of the tribals have become a recurring motif to recreate a magical realism from a study of this environment.”

Ramachandran’s drawings span 56 years and form invaluable records of his observations that provide the foundations for his paintings and sculptures. It is perhaps the first time that such an extensive retrospective of drawings and studies of a leading artist have been on show in New Delhi. The exhibition traces the artist’s journey of creative expression based on observations and influences fromlife experiences, literature and the essences of developing ideologies. They trace his journey from childhood in Attingal, Kerala (1958) through his student days in Santiniketan, West Bengal (1958 1964) and finally to Delhi (1964 to the present). A prolific artist, the selection of nearly 1200 drawings, sketches and studies have been taken from a pool of 5000 works, a telling indicator of the extraordinary scale of Ramachandran’s output.

 

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