Avinash Chandra

Estate of Avinash Chandra

Acquired from Osborne Samuel Gallery, London, 2014

Singh ed., Humanscapes - Avinash Chandra: A Retrospective, DAG Modern, New Delhi, 2015, cover and p. 124-125

Humanscapes - Avinash Chandra: A Retrospective 13 December 2015, Private View Brochure, DAG Modern, New Delhi, 2015, cover

There is cracquelure present throughout which consistent for a painting of this size and medium. Very minor spots of loss are visible upon very close inspection. Spots of paint consolidation are visible under UV light, most noticeably in areas of lighter paint.
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“There is an ambiguity to all of his imagery that can be understood through a layering of psychological import: at first glance they are one thing and on closer inspection, or at a different glance they are something else. They are often at once structures and figures, full of energy and static, anthropomorphic and human” (Avinash Chandra: A Retrospective 2 - 18 November 2006, Exhbition catalogue, Osborne Samuel LLP, Berkley Square Gallery, 2006, p. 11)

 

Avinash Chandra is known for his abstracted yet sexualized representations of the female body although he began his career painting Indian landscapes and townscapes. He was the youngest ever artist to be offered an exhibition by the Progressive Artist's Group, and was eventually awarded first prize at the Lalit Kala Akademi in 1955. When he moved permanently from New Delhi to London in 1956, he continued to paint works around the theme of landscapes and townscapes with rounded hills and whirling suns for another decade. Chandra had his first British one-man exhibition at the Imperial Institute in 1957 and it was well received. In 1962, the BBC produced a television documentary titled ‘Art of Avinash Chandra’ that brought the artist further recognition.

 

By the middle of the 1960s, approximately the same time that this large scale canvas was produced, Chandra’s work had become increasingly focused on the female form, and he went on to produce many oils and drawings in coloured inks with interlocking abstract figures teeming with sexual imagery.  Chandra saw his own art practice, and indeed all art, as quintessential to understanding thought processes and foundation. “Art has always been, always will be, the essential instrument in the development of human consciousness” (ibid.).