Honouring Jagdish Mittal

Shrishti Art Gallery’s three-day art festival ‘Ramaniyam’ begins tomorrow

October 08, 2014 06:57 pm | Updated May 23, 2016 07:32 pm IST - HYDERABAD

Art collector Jagdish Mittal. Photo: G. Krishnaswamy

Art collector Jagdish Mittal. Photo: G. Krishnaswamy

It is a special celebration for the grand old man of the art world, Jagdish Mittal, as he enters his 90th year. Shrishti Art Gallery is launching ‘Ramaniyam’ — a three-day art festival from October 10-12. This is the first edition of the festival honouring Mittal’s contribution to Indian art over the last 60 years. Amidst the hustle-bustle of planning the event, Lakshmi Nambiar of Shrishti Art Gallery says her excitement levels are sky high. “He (Jagdish Mittal) has been at the forefront at the art scene. Also he has one of the finest art collections but only very few know about it. Be it the miniature art, Deccani scrolls or Telangana paintings… the collection would have gone extinct but for him. He has done selflessly and donated his collection to a trust. With Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum of Art, the couple have sacrificed a lot. He has been living in Hyderabad since ’50s and has done such a service to the country. Hyderabad’s art scene gets elevated with this festival,” says an excited Lakshmi.

A plethora of events have been planned for three days. On the first day, Shrishti Art Gallery will showcase Jagdish Mittal’s art collection and photographs from his personal life. It will be followed by talks by experts like Dr. P.M. Bhargava, Laxma Goud, Shankar Melkote and Dr. Radhe Shyam Shukla on Jagdish Mittal’s influence on their lives as well as the art landscape. The second day will see an exhibition of artworks by Hyderabad’s leading artists from 1950 onwards. “We want to go back and showcase works of senior artists like P.T Reddy, Vidya Bhushan Rajaiah, and earlier works of Surya Prakash, Gowri Shankar and Laxma Goud,” says Lakshmi.

Indian contemporary art will be in focus on the final day. An exhibition of paintings by masters of Indian contemporary art, M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, F.N. Souza and others, will be on display at Salar Jung Museum. The inauguration of this exhibition will be followed by a talk by Nitin Bhayana, renowned art collector and businessman. Besides this, there is a release of a coffee table book on Jagdish Mittal by Pinky Reddy.

Lakshmi says the focus of the festival is to create a buzz on the art scene. “Hyderabad’s art scene is not really developed. Unless you have shows like these, art will not be perceived differently,” she states. The onus was to create a festival approach and make Hyderabadis mark these days in the art calendar. “We plan to organise two big events annually - one in March for my mother (Remani Nambiar’s) anniversary and the other would be an art festival after the Dasara vacation. We want Hyderabadis to look forward to something different in the art scene. ‘Ramaniyam’ means ‘beautiful’. It also has my mum’s name (Remani) and it will be forever,” she says.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.