Renaissance flavour in India

Renaissance-style portraiture is at display in Pragati Maidan.

New Delhi: Two wine bottles, a glass decanter, a measuring cup, a chunk of cheese on a tissue paper and a bunch of purple carnations -- from a distance, the composition glows like a glossy colour photograph from the cover of a lifestyle magazine. A closer look shows a canvas base and the magical use of oil paints and brushstroke, which is almost photographic in details and finish.

The canvas Chateau Pichon Longueville by leading American contemporary still life artist Paul S Brown is part of a cache of 15 still life paintings in the Renaissance tradition, brought to India by the 250-year-old London-based WH Patterson Fine Art dealer. Classical still life drawings and Renaissance-style portraiture by both foreign and Indian artists captured the imagination of Indian buyers and viewers at the India Art Summit 2009 at the Pragati Maidan in New Delhi Aug 19-22. The cache includes Venetian waterscapes, nude studies, floral still lives, animal portraits and traditional kitchen scenes made famous by the Dutch painters of the 16th and the 17th century. "Still life never went away. People appreciate its technical details and find it easy to identify with objects. We as a gallery deal only in still lives and realistic landscapes and have a collection of more than 200 still lives back in London. Our oldest still life drawing dates back to the 17th century," Glenn A Fuller of WH Patterson Fine Art Dealer, who manages his family art house, told reporters. Fuller sources his still life canvases from across Europe and the US, where according to the gallerist, "several young contemporary artists are returning to Renaissance realism". Peter Wageman, says Fuller, is another such artist whose floral still life canvases are popular among Indian collectors in Britain. "Indians like flowers in vases," said Fuller, who sold a floral still life study at the summit to a Delhi-based collector Thursday. The price bands of the still life canvases at Patterson range between 6,000 and 30,000 pounds. Chennai-based Sangeeta Chopra, the secretary general of the World Crafts Council, who has a "small collection of still lives by MF Husain and M Krishnan" feels still life compositions give the viewer a sense of participation. "They are profound and the mind can share what the artist is trying to capture," the collector, who was in New Delhi for the art summit, told reporters. Chopra, who has toured Venice, was riveted by a Venetian waterscape. "I almost feel that I am back in Venice," she said. Master realist Subodh Gupta, known for his still lives of kitchen utensils, says over 50 percent galleries across the world show still lives. "Realism has always been there and will never disappear," Gupta said. Concurs Latvian gallerist Yvonna Veiharte, who is showing Renaissance-style portraiture and still life compositions by young contemporary artist Anita Arbidane. "Most of her works are detailed self portraits. She likes Renaissance art and its decadent and detailed style of painting," Veiharte said. Arbidane, 26, shot to the limelight last year with her Renaissance style portrait of the Latvian president titled "President`s Portrait With Rabbit". Her works are priced between 7,000 and 9,000 Euros. Vadodara-based contemporary artist Gargi Raina, who was displaced from Kashmir as a two-year-old, is also a Renaissance realist. One of her art works -- a panel of nine canvases in water wash technique and dry pastels titled "Constructing the Memory of a Room" in her childhood home in Kashmir -- uses the Renaissance still life technique to portray individual objects in the room. The panel is priced at Rs10 lakh. "Her show with us last year was a runaway success," Anubha Dey of the Mumbai-based Bodhi Art Gallery told reporters. "Realism and classical touch in art are back though with a contemporary flavour. Young artists are returning to their figure and line drawing roots," artist Vivek Sharma told IANS. Sharma carries realism and still life a step further. His style is photorealism. "My art is inspired by photography and I try to replicate photographs on my canvas," he said. One of his works, "The Deep", a large format canvas of US president Barack Obama with his head against a chessboard held aloft by Indian god Hanuman, is simultaneously Renaissance and contemporary. "Obama is as he appears in his photographs whereas the concept and the Hanuman are my idioms," Sharma explained. "Realism is good as long as artists develop their own language. I hate works which look the same," Peter Nagi of the Nature Morte Gallery told reporters. IANS