Bhajju Shyam
In his early 20s, Shyam remembers filling in colours in intricate patterns painted by his uncle Jangarh Singh Shyam. As a child, he had assisted his mother in decorating the walls of their mud house with traditional Gond motifs in Patangarh village (Madhya Pradesh) but this was different. “He would encourage me to make my own works and not copy his style,” says the Bhopal-based artist. The apprenticeship continued for almost a decade. He began to present Bhajju’s works before his own collectors and in 1997, when Bhajju found buyers for five of his works, he knew that he is perhaps ready to come out of the shadows. In 1998, he exhibited at a show dedicated to indigenous art in Paris, and in 2001, he was in London to paint the interiors of the restaurant Masala Zone. Soon his works began to travel the world. Awarded the Padma Shri last year, he has gained recognition for pictorial narratives that tell the stories of Gond tradition, myth and folklore and also address contemporary realities. The experimentation continues: If in 2017, at an exhibition in Vancouver, he painted on photographs, at the ongoing exhibition, he has painted in grey. “I started with a lighter shade of grey, but then chose to make it darker so that the details are visible,” says Shyam, 49. Also on view are more radiant works. If in Mahua Ped, we see a couple in embrace under entwined trees, another work titled Jalharin, dominated by eclectic blue and purple, depicts how life on earth began.
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