Professor Krishna Reddy (1925-2018), an internationally renowned printmaker, sculptor and educator passed away in New York on 22nd August. Reddy created for himself a rare pantheon in printmaking as he simplified technical processes while creating powerful colour areas never imagined before to create a novel process in printmaking called colour viscosity.
Shantiniketan to Slade
Born in Chitoor in Andhra Pradesh, Krishna Reddy was a student of Nandlal Bose in Vishwabharati, Shantiniketan. After Shantiniketan he went onto the Slade School in London and then to Paris. In a conversation, Reddy spoke of his friendship with luminary J. Krishnamurthi who remained a lifelong friend. He travelled to Europe where he spent his most impressionable years in London, France, Rome and Milan, studying sculpture and working with Henry Moore, Ossip Zadkine and Mario Marini. Zadkine introduced Krishna Reddy to Stanley William Hayter, a formidable innovator and printmaker who had founded the widely influential print studio - Atelier 17 - in Paris in 1927. It is at Atelier 17 in the early 50s that the most important developments in Krishna Reddy's life as printmaker took place.
Colour viscosity
No one thought a sculptor from Shantiniketan would go to France to forge a new process in printmaking that celebrated the broken colour or pointillist colour printing process. Using techniques of plate preparation such as aquatint, mezzotint, photo engraving and deep biting, the print maker and avowed mentor in France developed rare colour fields in printing with juxtaposed dots or broken colours to give us islands of intensities and activities in the interlinking intricacy of colours.
In 1996 at a show at Shridharani Gallery in Delhi in an interview with this writer, he said: “I have lived to explore a series of plates experimenting with colour processes. Along with its expressive potentialities of these methods grew I felt the need for developing new techniques of plate-preparation and new ways of applying colours to the plate – ways that are so essential for evolving new images in our art.”
The discovery that numerous colours could be printed at one time on a single plate was his greatest advancement in the area of printmaking. Between soft rollers and different kinds of ink he unravelled the magic of superimposition. As each ink was possessed of a particular viscosity (stickiness), Reddy showed how to give unique layers to the etched and carved plates. Interestingly, some colours would mix, and some would repel. This technical breakthrough effectively eliminated repetition and gave greater freedom and control over his/her work.
Intricate intaglios
Dawn Worship (1973)
Reddy’s intricate intaglios were imperious and mercurial. They showcased the artist as a worshipper of nature and life. Works like “Dawn Worship”, “Woman and Sunflower”, “Clown”, “Flying Swans” were graphic plates that exhibited an elemental experience which subtly merged with the spiritual. And what a lesson in the beauty of botanics – almost like an x-ray vision of intensities were his “Apu and Clown” series.
Clown Falling (1981)
Reddy’s Clown series were fascinating in terms of tint as well as timbre. It was like looking at the works of a master teacher, sharing half a century of innovation and research with students and artists, with workshops and lectures throughout the United States, Europe and India.
At his show at Experimenter Gallery (2016) in Kolkata, his watercolours and drawings were born out of the prism of geometry. Reddy had always maintained, “Geometry is the clay with which I build my pot.” In this marriage of the material and spiritual –Reddy made an attempt to lay bare the forms that made appearance and perception possible in order to give us a sojourn that was deeply designed to belong to Indian roots.
He was a global revolutionary in intaglio printing and ensured his place in the history of graphic arts in the world. Reddy said, “I treated the intaglio plate like a sculpture, I was carving contours of relief with tools in addition to etching with acid.”
Politics and freedom
Demonstration (1968)
He often reminisced about old times and said Shantiniketan gave him his abacus. As a young boy of eight or nine, he was involved in politics – fighting for India’s freedom and independence. “The British cut off food supplies and people starved. Millions died in the Bengal Famine. In Calcutta, a lot of the artists served as volunteers, carrying dead bodies. It taught me that the significance of living is more than what we call art.”
His most famous sculptures were “Demonstration” exhibited at Experimenter 2016 and at the Metmuseum NY last year. The two Demonstration sculptures were created in Paris in 1968, it marked cultural, social, and political revolutions in many parts of the Western world.
Reddy’s works are a residue of reflection and resonance. His words,“I draw all the time. It is the lifeline of an artist,” continue to reverberate.
Since 1977, Reddy had been a professor and artist-in- residence in New York University serving as the Director of Graphics and Printmaking in the Art Department. He received the Padma Shri in 1972 for distinguished services to the world of contemporary art practices. Reddy was also recently honoured as one of the guest Invitees to the Silvermime National Print Biennial in USA. His works can be found in several private and public collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Albertina Museum, Vienna, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
