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New Delhi : Mohinder K. Puri is a rare artist who turns Hindustani classical music and the medieval Indian dance form Kathak into textured surfaces and fluid human figures on the canvas.
"I have loved music since childhood. When I lived at Karachi in Pakistan as a child, I would stand on the balcony of my home and sing. Passers-by would look up to find a sweet boy humming. The brush with music continued even when I came to Delhi in 1960 to learn classical music from Pandit Amarnath. But I decided at the last moment to pursue art," recalls the 72-year-old Delhi-based artist, who is exhibiting solo at the Visual Arts Gallery in the Capital. The show opened on Feb 14.
"But my creative interactions with musicians like sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, tabla exponent (late) Chaturlal and kathak guru Birju Maharaj gave a new aesthetic dimension to my art. Every new raga and instrument that I heard imbued my art with a new movement and colours," the artist told the media.
"Bandishain: The Compositions", the artist's 21st solo show, features 50 works on music, dance and the traditional art of story-telling in acrylic colours, ink and pencil. The compositions capture human figures in fluid rounded shapes.
The compact forms roll out of each other in titles like "Bird Story", "Horse Story", "The Story Teller", "The Flute Player", "Devotees", "Morning Melody" and "Geometry of Relationship", which are delicately textured with multi-coloured surfaces in which the thick acrylic colours melt and merge with the ease of water colours and gouache.
"I use acrylic like water colour to texture the surface of the paintings. I had to struggle with the medium to get a washed-out look. Acrylic is a difficult medium because it is opaque and I had to reject several drafts before getting the right texture," Puri said. Puri is also one of the pioneers who sculpted with ceramics and fired clay in the mid-1960s when the medium was not yet in fashion in India.
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