Natvar Bhavsar

Acquired from a New York gallery

New Jersey, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutger's University, Natvar Bhavsar: The Dimensions of Color, 11 March 2007 - 22 July 2007

J. Voorhees, Natvar Bhavsar: The Dimensions of Color, Zimmerli Art Museum, New Jersey, 2007, p.54

Good overall condition.
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Natvar Bhavsar is an internationally regarded artist who in 2010, was awarded the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Grant Award for his contribution to the arts. Bhavsar’s work can be found in numerous institutions including the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Boston Museum of Fine Art.

Bhavsar was born in Gujarat in 1934 and studied at the CN School of art in Ahmedabad. Born into a family of printers, Bhavsar was surrounded by vats of colour as a child. Bhavsar’s art was initially influenced by the ancient sites of Ajanta, Ellora and the Sun Temple of Modera, combined with an interest in Abstract Expressionism and in particular the paintings of Mark Rothko. Bhavsar also began to focus his attentions on the Hindu festivals of Holi and Rangoli. The dispersal of vibrant coloured pigments to create a dramatic visual impact became central to his work. Through his experiments with colour Bhavsar developed a distinctive language of colour-field painting. In 1962 Bhavsar left India for the US, where he studied at the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Fine Arts. In 1965, he was awarded the John D Rockefeller Grant, which launched him into the New York art scene and the New York school of colourists.

For Bhavsar the process of painting is pivotal to his art. Bhavsar’s technique of working with dry granules of pigment is very deliberate and precise. There is a controlled rhythm in the application. The artist describes the process “I lay out multitudes of colors with dry pigment, through a mesh screen, onto the canvas on the floor. Then strokes are brushed over it with huge brushes that move the pigment upward or downward. The whole is sprayed with oil and a plastic medium which makes the colours stick to the canvas in up to 200 layers; craters build up. Laying down colour with such freedom is a unique process, like rangoli—which you can't hang on a wall—but more complex, more sophisticated. Dry pigment has visual power, paint loses lustre.” (‘New Explorations in a Universe of Color’, The Wall Street Journal, 27 May 2013) As demonstrated in the present monumental painting, Bhavsar is able to create fields of variegated fluid and dense colour that migrate across the picture plane. As Bhavsar states “My work is about formlessness, about movement - of motes, leaves, ripples in water, form in clouds.” (ibid.). Bhavsar’s paintings possess a pulsating energy and spiritual aura that recall the Indian festivals that have always inspired him.