K Laxma Goud’s art practice

Born in 1940, Nizampur, Andhra Pradesh, K Laxma Goud did his Diploma in Drawing & Painting from Government College of Fine Arts and Architecture, Hyderabad and completed his Post-Diploma in mural painting & printmaking at M. S. University, where he worked under Prof K. G. Subramanyan.

His life and art is marked by a strong belief in his core values. He has gone against the long-held presumption that an artist can only succeed market by producing large-format painting. He has staunchly stood by the sketch-line that connects the crude physicality of his characters to their more delicately and subtly exposed psyches. His works of the late 80s period are more geometric and playful in nature. Their contours are fuller and his line persists - more resolved and more mature.

A recurrent theme with the sensitive artist has always been that of the erotic - projected as a powerful element of male and female sexuality. According to the artist, 'there’s eroticism hidden in nature itself. Humor, vitality and earthiness emerge as he transforms the characters of his work – a man into goat, and a goat into woman. His simple imagery conveys an idyllic reality, slowly getting obliterated by rampant urbanization.

His raw and vivacious portrayal of men and women exude the rustic, albeit fascinating Indian ethos rather than stressing upon any specific individual identity. They are imbibed with energy, which reverberates through his strokes and teeming textures. Apart from his exemplary narrative ability, Laxma Goud's skill and sophistication in dealing with pencil or paintbrush are simply remarkable.

An eye for meticulous detail and precise incisiveness marked by hatched lines has been his forte. Gradually, the figures have turned softer, seemingly more introspective. His practice is largely centered on the rural environment recreating landscapes from his formative years as if perpetually frozen in time and memory. His more recent lush landscapes done in vivid colors reminiscent of his jovial youth spent in lusty rural settings of his home state.

Satish Gujral: A multi-faceted veteran

One among India’s living legends, veteran artist Satish Gujral has dominated the Indian art scene for over six decades. He has left an indelible mark in almost every conceivable form and medium of expression, and has rightfully received acclaim internationally during his illustrious career. He has conceived architectural marvels like a palace in Riyadh for Saudi Arabia’s royal family; created sculptures out of burnt wood.

There are murals at Shastri Bhavan in Delhi and Gandhi Bhawan in Chandigarh that reflect his love for public art. The Belgian Government honored him with the prestigious "ORDER OF THE CROWN" for astounding design of the Belgian Embassy. He has also been among the first artists from India to work on paper collages.

Satish Gujral’s earlier drawings struck a chord with those who, like the artist himself, had passed through agonizing times of the Partition and its blood-filled aftermath. Laced with a deep humanistic concern and a strong expressionist verve, they brought back to our consciousness the latent pain and despair.

However, his new set of drawings presented by Kolkata’s Aakriti Art Gallery, a couple of years ago unfolded a totally different approach. Created over a period from 2005 to the year 2011, the delightful works exuded exuberance and gaiety etched elegantly, as it were, into the very groove of the captivating contour lines of the objects and figures.

In these deft drawings the firm albeit resilient lines quite paradoxically harbored marks of austerity and control. In many of the drawings, the human figures seemed to have been trapped in a sort of visual trance. They exuded a quality of a freeze-shot or at times, a halted moment. Thus stillness and resonance became their hallmarks. Figures, in these delightful drawings were engaged in some strange activities. The mode of lyrical representation harked back to a wistful time, a naive nostalgic psyche that hovers, as it would be, on a somewhat undefined neutral territory.

What will it take to tap the growth potential of Indian art market?

Art as an asset class is on the verge on a smart turnaround trajectory. So what are the factors driving art market in the country?

1. It offers an element of diversification to core investment portfolios. The art market tends to have a low correlation with the movement of stocks, bonds and other instruments. As a result, it can be a low risk strategy compared to traditional asset classes.
   
2. The concerns about the shape of global recovery are not fully erased. Extremely resilient against the prevailing economic uncertainties, especially the Indian art market is staging a strong comeback as a string of successful auctions suggest, with most top artists now quoting at the pre-crisis levels. Interest in quality works has revived with a growing number of collectors keen to enter the market, realizing there’s good scope for bargain-hunting.
   
3. The value of the modern and contemporary Indian art still represents just a fraction of the global share, which leaves immense scope for growth and expansion. It has immense potential since it’s undervalued in comparison to international art, albeit, catching up fast when it comes to quality, versatility and experimentation.
   
4. On the flip side, India’s art scene suffers from lack of enough experienced curators and critics, art publications and documentation. There is no visible institutional and museum collecting/ viewing culture to deepen the roots of nascent art market.
   
5. A majority of Indian buyers have probably been in the domain for not more than a decade or so. Obviously they are still in the process of learning about art & collecting. In spite of a vibrant art culture in India, the rather narrow collector base remains a worry for the art market. It has tremendous potential that still remains to be tapped.
   
6. Significantly, the new age collectors are focusing not only on the established masters but also on young and emerging artists, which has both its risks and rewards that need to be fully fathomed.

Rakhi Peswani’s artistic journey

Below are the key milestones in artist’s Rakhi Peswani’s career:

1. Rakhi Peswani received the Inlaks Scholarship for the UNIDEE in residence at Cittadellarte, Fondazione Pistoletto in 2006; Artists’ residency at Sanskriti Kendra, Sanskrithi Pratishthan, New Delhi in 2007 and PEERS-2003’ residency invitation from KHOJ, New Delhi. 
2. The artist was invited for a residency in The Hague, where she showed Bodies / Subterrain (Eurydice & Sita), at Vrije Academie in 2011. Her recent significant solo exhibitions include ‘Matters Under the Skin 2011’, Art HK – Asia One, Hong Kong, courtesy The Guild, Mumbai; ‘Intertwinings’, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi and ‘Sonnet for Silent Machines’, at Jehangir Nicholson Gallery and  The Guild.
3. She has participated in several select exhibitions including Art Stage Singapore 2011, ‘I think therefore graffiti…’, presented by The Guild; ‘Reverie’, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai; ‘A New Vanguard: Trends in Contemporary Indian Art’, Saffronart, New York; ‘The Ego, The Persona’ by The Guild, New York; Analytical Engine, Bose Pacia, Kolkata and Gallery Seven Art Ltd, Delhi.
4. Her participation in Museum shows include - Bring Me A Lion: An Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art, The Hunt Gallery, St. Louis, Missouri; Potters in Peril, at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai; Generation in Transition. New Art from India at Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland and Contemporary Art Centre, Lithuania. She is part of the upcoming show ‘Zones of Contact’ at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi.
5. Rakhi Peswani had been teaching Visual arts at the Sarojini Naidu School of Fine arts and Communication Hyderabad Central University  since last eight year, She recently joined as a faculty at Srishti School of Art  Design Technology in Bangalore.
6. Her new show, entitled ‘Anatomy of Silence’ at The Guild in Mumbai tries to excavate the body in the handmade through the now crucial trope of its displacement and near demise. The relationship between laborious work and a craftsman’s body is deftly explored and seen vis-a-vis the situation of the handmade today.

Female artists who did well at the recent international auction - I

Yamini Nayar’s ‘Being There; What is Essential’

Price Realized: £3,125 ($4,866); Estimate: £2,500 - £3,500 ($3,880 - $5,432)

The artist’s creations seem trapped in between post-explosive moments of reality and dream like scenarios in which humanity has almost been wiped out. At the root of Yamini Nayar’s geometric interventions lies latent inventiveness. Her redesigning of damaged cityscapes is done in order to suggest further possibilities. Here, she builds order out of chaos, to seek sense where there are only the post-destruction remnants. Another architectural drawing on photograph has the artist using previous documentation as a starting point.

‘The Ethnographic Series; from the project 'Native Women of South India: Manners & Customs' by Pushpamala N. and and Clare Arni

Price Realized: £7,500 ($11,678); Estimate: £6,000 - £8,000 (($9,312 - $12,416)
The performance artist refers to various genres of image-making in her works, resulting in richly layered hybrids with multiple references. The artist is always the central protagonist in these dramas and the works function as documents of performances, as critiques of representational constructions, and as oblique self-portraits.

‘Tales of Amnesia’ by Chitra Ganesh

Price Realized: £27,500 ($42,818); Estimate: £8,000 - £12,000 ($12,416 - $18,624)
A prominent and internationally celebrated artist, she uses her work as a means of questioning the many opposites, which exist within the framework of the so-called ‘society’ that we live in. Recovering buried histories to consciously bring them into a public and contemporary realm has informed her art practice and her working with contemporary/ historical political figures and mass mediated imagery.

She states, “This imagery has not been fully explored; these stories contain question marks that can be best articulated through imaginative visual language.” Her diverse oeuvre that includes installations and sculptural works is largely an outcome of a mélange of factors, such as queer politics, present day imperialism, lyric poetry, mythological narratives, and erased moments in South Asian history. Treating these as a starting point, she integrates them with her mythic imagery, to conceive a hybrid world, which articulates both psychic transformation and historical conflict.

(Christie’s South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art auction; 11 June 2013 - London, King Street)

Female artists who did well at the recent international auction - II

Nasreen Mohamedi's Untitled

Price Realized: £6,250 ($9,731); Estimate: £6,000 - £8,000 ($9,312 - $12,416)

Nasreen Mohamedi's diary entries from around the time that these works were executed allow the viewer a very personal insight into the thought processes that motivated the artist to execute these complex works. Whilst a precursor to the austere geometric paperworks of the mid-1970s and onwards, her works of the mid-1960s are an equally critical, yet often under-estimated, part of her oeuvre. This period saw Nasreen creating works of great vitality: we are presented with landscapes that are almost blown apart by quick daubs of ink and use of wash technique. There is an undeniable debt owed in this period to her training at Central St. Martins, London, and to her interaction there with the British artist Peter De Francia. (Text by Mortimer Chatterjee)

Zarina’s Untitled

Price Realized: £2,500 ($3,893); Estimate: £2,000 - £3,000 ($3,104 - $4,656)

Her multi-faceted practice embraces and amalgamates architecture, sculpture, woodcuts etc; tactile in the diverse materials used, minimal in its expression, and packed with meaning. Her preferred media are wood that she carves, (the wooden printing blocks), and paper that she manipulates with dexterity (including papier mâché forms).

Meera Mukherjee’s Untitled (Earth Carriers)
Price Realized: £6,875 ($10,704); Estimate: £5,000 - £7,000 ($7,760 - $10,864)
Having trained at the prestigious Munich Art Academy in the '60s, under Expressionists Tony Staedler and Heinrich Kirchner, she returned to India, determined to seek her artistic idiom and creative expression closer home. She evolved an iconography that was unique. Opposing pulls of mass and movement, strength and vulnerability give an intense character to her figures enhanced by the textural play created by the use of decorative elements on the surface. Many of her sculptures portrayed women working on and off the field, repairing fishing nets, stitching and generally toiling away.

(Christie’s South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art auction; 11 June 2013 - London, King Street)

‘The Rising Phoenix’ proposed at QMA

A proposed exhibition of Indian art, entitled ‘The Rising Phoenix: A Dialogue Between Modern and Contemporary Indian Art’, at The Queens Museum of Art (QMA) sure is set to become one of the most comprehensive explorations of Indian artists and their rich legacy at any cultural institution in America in the last several decades.

Following ‘Out of India: Contemporary Art of the South Asian Diaspora’ (1997-98); ‘Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India’ (2005); and ‘Fatal Love: South Asian American Art Now’ (2005), this will be another significant QMA project that focuses on modern & contemporary art. It looks to contemplate and compare Indian history’s two critical moments - the post-Independence phase, witnessing the rise to prominence of the Progressive Artists Group (PAG), involving MF Husain, FN Souza and S H Raza apart from Ram Kumar, VS Gaitonde, Krishen Khanna, Akbar Padamsee and Tyeb Mehta.

‘The Rising Phoenix’ carefully explores and examines the pivotal formation of India’s modern art movement in India.  Second, it will look into the globalization of Indian art scene, which gathered momentum in mid-1990s, when several mid-career artists from the country featured in ambitious international biennales and exhibits, with 1997 as a key year. It not only marked 50 years of India’s freedom but also saw a number of artists being exhibited across the globe, representing a defining phase in Indian art.

Upcoming, talented artists became an integral part of the international art scene through residencies and scholarships. Tracing this transition, the exhibition intends to reflect on this ‘moment of the Indian zeitgeist’, which inhabit different spaces including popular, personal, the global/local, and technological by engaging in video, performance, film, painting etc, comprising existing pieces as well as new work commissioned for it.

Curated by Dr. Arshiya Lokhandwala, ‘The Rising Phoenix’ undertakes a dialogue between the Progressive/ modern vis-à-vis contemporary Indian artists that through a comparison narrative of critical questions and observations between the two periods will lead to a deeper insight into Indian art and its history.