As I step into the recently opened Akriti Art Gallery at Mogulrajpuram, which has been generating significant buzz for art-lovers, I see Chicago-based Siramdasu Venkata Rama Rao working on a canvas set on an easel, covered with a montage of colours. I eagerly crane my neck for a closer look and find the face of a girl with her loose curls falling on her forehead and along the sides, fully covering the other side of her cheek.
The painter pauses, brush uplifted and with a smile he says: “Unlike in the abstract art, figurative mode has restrictions. So I chose to blend both. If you notice, there is no dent between the forehead and nose and even part of the eyes are obscure. This is to give it a touch of western style art. Had it been Indian, the eyes would almost protrude towards sides,” the master of strokes explains with a smile. Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea have all been teachers of Rama Rao whose paintings encompass veins of both abstraction and figuration.
“Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. This departure from accurate representation can be slight, partial, or complete. The subject of the work is based on what you see: colour, shapes, brushstrokes, size, scale and, in some cases, the process,” he says.
Rama Rao is an artist ever searching to capture the beauty, power and fragility in this world. If graceful spirit shines through some of his paintings, his other works express enchanting and strong aspects of the mystique all the while playing with a sense of connection and disconnection from nature.
Time spent with Rama Rao is like an escape, a brief getaway that allows you to leave your body for a while to meander in his captivating world of colours and return rejuvenated, prepared to get back to the routine with renewed vigour.
“Art is a way of connecting and of quenching a soul. There is a mutual understanding of a painting meaning different things to different people, but the kernel of truth is that each person feels the beauty and wants to stay connected to it," he says. A native of Gudivada in Krishna district, Rama Rao learnt the basics of painting from a local teacher K. Venugopal Rao and later was baptised in the world of art in Madras School of Arts and Crafts, Chennai.
For someone who won the Lord Croft Award for the best artist in the Commonwealth in 1962, whose lithographs were bought by the eminent art historian Sir Herbert Read, Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, whose works have been exhibited with leading artists such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Georges Bracque, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali and Jackson Pollock, who has won recognition as an eminent art teacher in the United States, who was honoured with a Padma Shri by President K.R. Narayana in 2001 and was mentioned by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in his 200th address to the Rajya Sabha in 2003, Rama Rao comes across as a disarmingly humble and grounded person.
“When I went to London on a two-year fellowship offered by the British Government, I was 26. I told myself that I need to make the best of this period. I read extensively about Picasso who was influenced by north western African primitive wooden masks. I decided to focus on Asiatic heritage, the highly decorative art.”
Rama Rao soon found himself looking for what Picasso had not done and zeroed in on lithography. “I wanted to bring in magic in my paintings using oil paintings that should become a mastery of language. I took nature—not trees, river and fruits- but the spirit of landscape. I remember as a child when I went up the Indrakeeladri hill with my parents, I enjoyed the lyrical beauty of Krishna River. I produced it on a board in abstract.” By next year, Rama Rao was a celebrity. “India gave me education but London made me the artist I am today.”
The colourist wields his pen with equal ease and is an established poet and writer. The one thing he is eager to portray in his paintings is surrealism. By stripping ordinary objects of their normal function, he aims to expose psychological truth and as a result created abstract images in order to evoke empathy from the viewer. “My pursuit has been to create my own distinct style of painting,” he says, adding: “This is imperative because I want to live after I die.”
