IIC showcasing paintings, serigraphs and sculptures by noted artist Amarnath Sehgal
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Artist Amarnath Sehgal and his much-loved Ganesha idol
Team L&M
Lovers of art are in for a treat. India International Centre, New Delhi is holding an exhibition of art works by noted veteran artist Amarnath Sehgal. Titled Mythologies, the show includes paintings, serigraphs and sculptures, the show is curated by Uma Nair. The works on show reflect Sehgal’s knack for revisiting the famous characters of the Ramayana and Mahabharata across time.
A noted Indian modernist sculptor, painter, poet as well as an art educator, Sehgal began his professional life as an engineer in Lahore, but later turned to art. He moved to Delhi in 1947, after the Partition.
The paintings on Mahabharata
“Through a series of paintings, a set of seriographs and a singl Ganesha idol, Mythologies revisits both Ramayana and Mahabharata through time. This exhibition is in veneration of his 100 year celebration,” says Nair, who has followed his work for more than three decades, adding that he is amongst India’s greatest sculptors who also dabbled in woodcuts.
Celebrating the beauty of life and the living, the maestro wrote poetry every day. Sehgal lived for many years in Luxembourg and picked up the versatile grammar of the European moderns but hinged onto Indianesque contours so that his vocabulary was a fine balance of Indian myth, bathed in the contemporary character of lithe contours, belonging to modernism.
The artworks on Ramayana
“This suite of works is a tribute to his love for Indian mythology, to his elephantine eagerness in translating tales as old as history, events older than tradition, and stories that never grow old,” says Nair. “But he was not religious by any yardstick; rather he was deeply spiritual. Lord Ganesha was his little mascot for everyday idioms, while the stories of the epic Ramayana and Mahabharata unraveled like abstracted tales that revisited making every day,” she says.
The simplicity of Sehgal’s drawings allows his audiences to examine his works without needing much interpretation.
The show is on till March 31.
