Yusuf Arakkal

Yusuf Arakkal was born in 1945 in the state of Kerala, South India. He was orphaned early in life, and grew up with every creature comfort available to him except parental love. He received a diploma in painting from the South Indian city of Bangalore, now the heart of India’s IT sector. He has been exhibiting both in India and internationally since the late 1960s and has received several awards for his works, which range in medium from oils, water colors, graphics and collages to sculptures in bronze, terra-cotta, wood, granite, steel, paper and fiberglass. His works “Boy” and “Paul Klees” reflect a surreal and almost abstract feel. To quote him: “There is an anguished being, disturbed and in distress somewhere deep inside me. A human being who yearns for a meaningful existence. It is the human presence that arouses my attention and stirs my creative inner space. I have been committed through my work, seeking a definition of human situations.” Today he is considered to be one of India’s senior and eminent artists.

Datta Bansode

"A painting is never finished. I work to reach a point where I can let it go."
The intensity of Datta Bansode's politically aware paintings may be traced to his first encounters with art as a boy in Latur, a city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. Bansode's first teacher was the artist and Buddhist monk Jagtap Sur. Using hardboard and enamel paints, Sur painted portraits of Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Maharashtrian hero Shivaji in a vivid, realistic style. Bansode went on to study art in Pune and Mumbai, both cities in Maharashtra, taking inspiration from his conversations with senior artists of the time. At the famous J.J. School of Art in Mumbai, he became exposed to the contemporary styles and began experimenting with new techniques of applying paint to canvas. He describes his works of this early period as brightly-colored compositions depicting daily scenes, including ad hoc still-lifes of his bedroom and portraits of his friends. A turning point in his style came in 1992, when Bansode returned to Latur in the aftermath of a major earthquake. While walking through the ravaged streets, he glimpsed many women in mourning for their lost families. The starkness of their figures and situations touched him, and inspired a change in his style. "I painted the widows over and over, and gradually their figures became simplified." Abandoning bright colors, Bansode began to work with a palette of chalk-white, beige and charcoal, creating somber, uncluttered compositions of grieving widows, as is depicted in his piece “Solace” on handmade paper, which depicts a group of widows comforting each other.

Ashok Bhowmick

Ashok Bhowmick was born in Calcutta, West Bengal. He graduated from the Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta in 1975 with a diploma in Fine Art. He has had several group and solo shows in India and has been granted many awards and honors. His painting “Mermaid”, which is mixed media on canvas, reflects a subtle and tasteful use of color, which, along with its theme, renders an almost fairytale quality to the piece.

Prakaash Chandwarkar

Prakaash Chandwarkar was born in 1965 and currently lives in Nepal. His paintings have the reputation of being so expansive that they mimic murals, altering the orientation of the space around them. The underlying artfulness, the calculated use of color, the interplay between primaries and secondaries, shades and tints are all designed to create the greatest visceral shock in his viewers. His recent use of the Buddha face is a delightful experience for the senses and powerful in its message.

Partho Chatterjee

Partho Chatterjee was born in 1967 in West Bengal, India and currently lives and works in New Delhi. He has held several solo and group shows across the country and is gaining recognition for his subtle use of color and the sensitivity he shows in his depiction of people and animals, as is evident in “Musing” and “Reminiscing”. In the latter, you can almost feel the smile on the young woman’s face as she recollects her lover.

Professor G.A. Dandekar

Prof. Dandekar was born in 1949 in Maharashtra, India. He tries to encapsulate his memory into his canvases. He depicts a number of colorful human subjects, reflective of his youth in the city of Sangli, Maharashtra. He captures not only their wardrobes and colors, but also their expressions and moods. He has caught the verve and rhythm in the lives of regular village people and is able to communicate instantly with the average viewer. One is left with a lingering feeling of color, good cheer, music and dance in a rural milieu, as is reflected in the vibrant “Friends” and “Yin and Yang”.

Rini Dhumal

Rini Dhumal was born in 1948 in West Bengal, India and is considered one of the country’s leading artists. She has had several solo and group shows both domestically and abroad and is internationally recognized. Rini assesses self-experiencing moments of awareness – dramatizing, fantasizing, remembering and occasionally re-inventing significant imagery in her continuing path towards what could be construed as a journey of self-discovery. She lives, paints, sculpts and also teaches now in the city of Baroda, Gujarat, after having studied in Bengal and Paris. Rini’s subjects are invariably women, like the mixed media on canvas “Queen”, or the depiction of the awesome Hindu Goddess Durga in the same medium; these memory-ripened, inward looking images appear deeply personal and lend an emotional climate of introspection. Then there are the bold use of fantasy and imagination, as in “Creature”. Rini’s women are usually center-stage and flanked by strange looking cats or birds, or dramatic flowers and assorted plumage. For Rini’s audience, her paintings succeed in opening a door to less bleak image of art, and life itself.

Ratnakar Ojha

Ratnakar Ojha was born in 1957 in Orissa, India. He has had several group and solo shows, and his striking and almost gaudy colors serve to enhance his view of village people and animals (he is particularly drawn to the vibrant green of parrots, as is evident in both his pieces here). His depictions of faces border on the ridiculous, lending a childlike quality to his art, and thereby an almost universal appeal. Perhaps, to describe him, it is best to quote the poetry of Anju Makhija:
“Everywhere, these faces,
I seek them not, yet
they find me.
Who are these faces?
Long necks, strained,
balanced on unyielding bodies.
Colours meet the eyes,
lines caress each nerve,
trace the blood, so red.
Parrots perched on bare shoulders,
tails twirled around naked breasts,
meetings with lost lovers.
Half-shut eyes, rose-bud lips,
I return you now,
to the eyelids of the city.”

Paritosh Sen

Paritosh Sen was born in 1918 in present-day Bangladesh, and is one of the most senior and respected artists of the Indian sub-continent. He was one of the pioneers of the Indian Modern Art Movement. Since he was a child, he has been fascinated by the world of nature, color and movement. He trained in Paris, and a meeting with Picasso in 1954 left a deep impression on his mind. Upon his return to India, he taught in several universities around the country. In the course of his career, his style has undergone several iterations. From the stylized to the voluminous, expressionist figures, he has gone a long way. However, bold strokes and the use of figuration and sharp irony remain a constant theme. He currently lives and works in Calcutta, West Bengal. “Sitar”, a work of mixed media on paper shows a woman playing the traditional Indian string instrument.

Buwa Shete, born in 1960 in Maharashtra, India, is one of the shining new stars on the Indian contemporary art scene. He has had several group and solo shows across the country and some abroad, and has received acclaim and awards. He worked as an illustrator and designing consultant for leading publications like the Times of India and advertising agencies. Buwa is unafraid of size and flirts outrageously with color. He uses everyday themes like parent and child (“Father and Child”, “Mother and Child”), and subject matter like priests and turbaned village men and turns them into a profusion of bold strokes and color, rendering contemporary, modernist images in rough, strong brush strokes that border on the fantastic.