Narayan Shridhar Bendre (1910 - 1992)

In the 1970s and 1980s 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 1890s, the inspiration for his work was always drawn directly from the world around him. 

'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.'  (Ratan Parimoo, N. S. Bendre, New Delhi, 1992).

Of his pretty paintings Bendre said: 'There is already a lot of misery in this world, I do not want to add to it.  I paint because I derive pleasure from painting and I try to give pleasure to others.  That is my philosophy of art.' (Amrita Jhaveri, A Guide to 101 Modern and Contemporary Indian Artists, Mumbai, 2005, p 19).