1. Arpana Caur is a sikh artist who was born in Delhi in 1954. Arpana’s main concern has been the girl child, condition of women and growing violence on women in India. Her focus has also spread to many other aspects of life including the environment, spiritualism (Nanak, Kabir, Buddha, Yogi and Yogini and Sufi series), time, life and death, the coexistence of past and present in India, communal riots, nuclear issues, peace, etc.

Her paintings are figurative. Her early works remind one of the solid smoothed treatment of Gupta aesthetics, which was later blended

with influences from Chola bronzes and provincial Mughal styles of the Deccan and Himalayan foothills.

Day and night ( oil on canvas)

Tears for Hiroshima ( wall painting in kassel, Germany)

Tree of life ( brass sculpture)

Artist's Statement: India is an exciting mixture of the old and new. Rural and urban India coexist in the strangest of ways. Even the capital of India, Delhi, my city, is dotted with medieval monuments and unwieldy urban growth, leading to a rich exciting assault of imagery that inspires my being. The Ajanta and Ellora and the Pahari miniaturists flow through my veins.

Myths linger in the mind, along with tales of freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh and saints like Nanak, Kabir and Meerabai. Spirituality takes us to unbelievable heights. Religious divisions tear us asunder. It is a land of contradictions, but always growing, never stale, always full of surprises. This pulsating, expanding milieu has given rise to a rich and colorful visual art of which I am a small part. An art which is bold and contemporary, touching universal socio-political or philosophical issues, without losing the fragrance of its roots.

2. A. Ramachandran is a renowned Indian painter, born in 1935 in Attingal, Kerala. He is one of India’s most distinguished and prolific artists who has ceaselessly experimented with visual language for more than four decades. His art is both contemporary and Indian in essence. Painter, sculptor, graphic artist, designer and art educationist, Ramachandran has explored diverse mediums and scales, with a dynamic personal vision and distinctive

artistic style.

Towards the sun

As spring passes by

Genesis of kurukshetra

3. Akbar Padamsee (born April 12, 1928, in Mumbai, India) is a contemporary Indian artist. His work is introspective; his “Metascapes” or his “Mirror Images” are “abstract images” formed from the search for a formal logic. His topics include landscapes, nudes, heads and he has done portraits created in pencil and charcoal. The

depth which emerges from his oil-based works, emanates from the colored matter. This creates a pictorial technique juxtaposing emerging split forms.

He has done, in addition to his painted work, black and white photographs which use light to create dimension. Padamsee always explored new plastic genres; he also created “SYZYGY”, “Events in a Cloud Chamber” films shot in 1970, and explored computers in “Compugraphics”.

couple (oil on canvas)

4. Manu parekh

Manu Parekh, a modernist of the third generation, was born in Ahmedabad in 1939 in Gujrat. Parekh’s early work explored the relationships between man and nature, as according to him, this was an energetic link that had to be celebrated. The artist also points out that, since then, contradictions have formed the basis of his artistic practice, no matter the subject or genre of his works.

Polemics have always intrigued Manu Parekh – the energy of the organic form and the inherent sexuality within these forms are intangible elements in his works. His paintings provoke viewers to take notice of the world around them through the emotion, pain

and anguish expressed in the subjects of his paintings. His colors and forms exude a volatile energy that can barely be contained within the confines of his canvas, and become an extension of the artist's personality.

falling horse

5. Velu viswanadhan: Born in Kerala, Velu Viswanadhan has carved his own domain in the contemporary art scene. There is something undoubtedly singular about Viswanadhan. He reckons life to be one big journey, journey to nothingness. Wandering the world over like a nomad he traces new designs and patterns. In his early years he drew inspiration from the geometrical ritualistic-magical diagrams of Kerala. Even after delving much in contrasted materials like paper, canvas and metal, the geomatrical patterns still continue to influence him as a breathing pattern.

His visual works (Films on the Elements) which could be defined as creative documentaries are quite different. For Viswanadhan, Cinema is the unconstrained prolongation of his canvas, an extension of paintings and sketches. They are open-ended films, which don't decide for the viewer, what he should think.

The “prismic paintings”( few colours used)

His early paris paintings

monochromatic

mixed media on paper