Artist Sarabjeet Singh passes away

Artist Sarabjeet Singh, known for his mountain paintings died on Friday.

New Delhi: Artist Sarabjeet Singh, known for his paintings of mountains and topographical drawings of the Himalayas, passed away Friday morning after a brief illness.The artist, who was in his late eighties, was cremated in the capital Friday.

Sarabjeet Singh was also a filmmaker and had made a few documentaries on the Himalayas and accompanied General Kodandera Subbayya Thimayya of the Indian Army on expeditions to Zoji la and Drass. He also recorded his experiences in his drawings. The artist`s wife, Shanta Sarabjeet Singh, is a well-known dance critic. "I met him for the first time in 1952 as a young man and held several of his exhibitions in my gallery. They used to be inaugurated by the vice-president and president. I have been in touch with him for the last 55 years and even have two of his canvases in my personal collection," Virendra Kumar Jain, founder of Kumar`s Art Gallery, one of the capital`s oldest art houses, told reporters. He was in the same genre and period of artists like Nicholas Roerich and Amrita Shergill, Jain said. "He was a spiritually enlightened man and never tried to force himself. He loved painting Lord Shiva and the Mansarovar lake and he was an important early contemporary artist post Independence," Jain said. Shobha Deepak Singh, a close friend and director of the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra, said she had two of Singh`s mountain-scapes in her personal collection. "He was a warm human being and could have become a Roerich had he been promoted," Singh told reporters. IANS