Kerala is slowly opening up to the world of art and is becoming a better place for artists to practice their work, said renowned painter and sculptor A. Ramachandran. The 78-year-old artist had left Thiruvananthapuram for Shantiniketan, West Bengal, in 1957 to study art. “I knew Kerala wasn’t the place for a serious pursuit of art. While things have changed, there is still some way to go.”
Kerala, says the artist, could accommodate new trends in literature and cinema. It thus celebrated the works of modernists such as Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, Vaikkom Muhammed Basheer and P. Kesavadev and appreciated G. Aravindan and Adoor Gopalakrishnan. “In painting, though, the State got stuck for long in the realistic school of Raja Ravi Varma.” Outside his home State, under the tutelage of master artists like Ramkinkar Baij, Ramachandran grew in stature. The artist is now set to return to his home State as an accomplished figure in the world of painting and sculpture. A 15-day retrospective of Ramachandran’s works will begin in Kochi on August 11, said a press release. The exhibition, being organized by the Vadehra Art Gallery, will open at Durbar Hall art gallery. A 100 of Ramachandran’s works, curated by art historian R. Siva Kumar, will be featured in the exhibition.
“It will cover his works of the last five decades — from 1964 till that of 2013. Hopefully the viewers in Kerala will notice and appreciate the many links of sensibility he shares with its writers and filmmakers,” said Prof. Siva Kumar of the Visva-Bharati University, West Bengal, who has written extensively on modern Indian art.
The artist, who was born in Attingal in 1935, was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2005.
