Narayan Shridhar Bendre (1910 - 1992)

In the 1970's and 1980's Bendre experimented with his own version of pointillism, this work perfectly illustrates his use of this technique.  Although the technique has been adopted from western artistic movements of the 1890's, the inspiration for his work was always drawn directly from the world around him. 

'I belong to this earth.  I walk on this earth, and I don't think of anything but this earth.  Things here are my kind of library, I'm not interested in anything else.  As such I don't create dream paintings.  Whatever I have experienced in this world I paint.  Other things are not important to me.' (Parimoo, 1992)

'With the inclusion of the hues and even the inclusion of the black color which are Expressionist traits, Bendre rather successfully attempted a sort of telescoping of the late nineteenth century French Impressionist style with the German Expressionist style of the second decade of the twentieth century...Langhammer brought into India, Kokoschka's style of panoramic landscapes.  Similar hues of color were employed by Bendre to replace the mellow color scheme of the existing Indore school as if to usher in the celebration of the Indian sunshine.'  (ibid.)