Born on April 29, 1848, in Kilimanoor, a village in the Indian state of Kerala, Ravi Varma’s works are highly prized among collectors, and his 1890 work “Radha in the Moonlight,” sold for INR 23 crore (USD 3,116,065) in 2016.

Earlier this month, well over a century after his death, a museum and art gallery dedicated to him was announced by the State Government of Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan laid the foundation stone, and a budget of INR 8 crore (USD 1,083,552) was allocated towards the development of the museum. This will be on the premises of the Thiruvananthapuram Museum and Zoo.

Rukmini Varma, a descendent of Ravi Varma and chairperson of the Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation said it was a positive step to spread awareness about the artist’s life and art.

The Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation, which was started in 2015, has been working over the years to create more awareness about Raja Ravi Varma and his art, both in India and abroad. The Foundation constantly engages with researchers and scholars who have studied Ravi Varma’s work and the impact his work has had on Indian art and history. The institution works to preserve his artistic legacy by engaging in research, study, and restoration.

“An artist should be able to communicate, and the more he does, the better his art will succeed,” said Rukmini Varma. “Ravi Varma reached so many people through his lithographs and paintings, perhaps more than any other artist in the world.”

Today, Ravi Varma’s work is familiar and can be seen everywhere in India— from prayer rooms to calendars. His use of mythological stories for art inspired the Amar Chitra Katha comic book series, while his use of bright color inspired kitschy Bollywood movie posters.

“When he was still a teenager, Ravi Varma studied the European Realism technique from Theodore Jensen, an English artist, and his early work, both the style and technique, marked a turning point in Indian art,” says author Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan, who is writing a book on Ravi Varma for children.

“He painted Indian subjects and Indian mythological stories, but with a European understanding. So instead of the ‘flat’ images seen in the work of artists earlier, Varma’s portraits were realistic; even the folds of the women’s saris and the creases on their brows were visible on the canvas.”

Later, Ravi Varma’s paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses, as well as scenes from the epics were mass-produced as lithographs in the printing press he owned. This made his art even more accessible and affordable to everyone, not only to art collectors and the nobility. Soon, Ravi Varma prints could be seen on streets, shops, and homes.

During the last years of the 19th century, and in the early years of the 20th century, Ravi Varma was arguably the most famous artist of India. In fact, a post office had to be opened in tiny Kilimanoor because letters and requests for paintings came flooding in for him from various corners of the country.

“People were able to identify themselves through his paintings — the characters, not just gods and goddesses,” said Rukmini Varma. “They were characters that he painted without considering caste or creed or religion. There was a unity he established through his paintings; he made people realize that they were Indian above anything else.”

Among other representations, Ravi Varma’s art has also featured more recently on saris. On Gandhi Jayanti 2019, designer Gaurang Shah launched a collection of khadi jamdani saris, which were showcased at Mumbai’s MGMA Museum. Khadi is a hand-spun natural fiber originating in the Indian subcontinent. Jamdani is woven on a brocade loom, with a supplementary weft to create patterns, in addition to the usual warp and weft weaving method.

Each of these 30 woven pieces, is an ode to Ravi Varma’s art, with the pallus (the loose ends of the saris, typically draped over the shoulder)each featuring a unique painting.

“Ravi Varma’s sensibilities and my match very well. The way he depicts his women, are the kinds of saris I weave,” said Shah. “His paintings are a burst of color, with each painting featuring 40-50 hues, and that’s what I’m known for as well.”

Shah, however, admits that recreating a painting, especially one as nuanced as Ravi Varma’s, was a Herculean task—with so many colors in the skin tone, details of the sari folds, the intricacies of the borders and jewelry, the background details like the sky and greenery.

(Edited by Anindita Ghosh and Sid Roy. Map by Urvashi Makwana)

November 28, 2020 National/International News
https://tntribune.com/new-museum-to-showcase-indian-artist-raja-ravi-varmas-legacy/

The post New Museum to Showcase Indian Artist Raja Ravi Varma’s Legacy first appeared on Indian Art News.

Though there are some institutions and honors already in the name of Varma, his admirers have long been calling for a reputed organization promoting painting in his name.

The new foundation will be based at the Kilimanoor Palace where Ravi Varma was born on April 29, 1848. He was the eldest child of Makayiram Nal Umamba Thampuratty and Ezhumavil Illathu Neelakandan Bhattathirippad. He studies the nuances of the art from his uncle Raja Raja Varma.
The foundation will be inaugurated by the head of the erstwhile Baroda royal family Samarjitsinhrao Gaekwad on Monday, the 111th death anniversary of Ravi Varma. Cultural Affairs Minister AK Balan will inaugurate the commemoration function.

Foundation Trust chairman K Ravi Varma revealed a story behind the choice of Gaekwad for the inauguration. “Raja Ravi Varma had planned a grand celebration on his 60th birthday. The then Baroda King was invited to inaugurate a new art gallery on the palace premises. Unfortunately, the maestro passed away before the birthday,” he said.

Besides painting, the foundation will promote various Indian arts, K Ravi Varma said. “We have planned a development programme in phases. In the first four years, the foundation will establish facilities which will make it a national center of excellence. Later, efforts will be taken to elevate it to an international centre with more facilities,” he said. The first phase will see the setting up of a painting school, avant-garde art gallery, library and a research centre. Satellite units have also been planned in different parts of the country.

The art gallery, says K Ravi Varma, will showcase state-of-the-art replicas of the master’s works. The palace does not have any original work of Varma, except for an unfinished one titled “Parsi Lady”. It will be restored and exhibited in the gallery. In the second phase, if proper security measures are ensured, the foundation will request palace members to hand over original works of the maestro. Workshops and specialized coaching in fine arts will be conducted by the foundation. Tie-ups are planned with the fine arts institutions in the country and abroad.

Trust chairman said the immediate priority is to restore Ravi Varma’s studio on the palace. A new one will be set up in place of the dilapidated office building of the palace. This will serve as the headquarters of the foundation.The Trust expects support from the government, corporate bodies, and NGOs for the foundation’s infrastructure needs. The inaugural function on Monday will have an exhibition of paintings by the descendants of Ravi Varma.

Source – By Express News Service  |   Published: 01st October 2017 11:04 PM  |

The post Celebrating the maestro’s work first appeared on Indian Art News.

Among the treasures that were moved secretly from Europe to the United States and helped finance Jewish entry into America‘s financial world, were paintings by the great masters. Held mostly in private collections, their sale � never in the public realm � consists of one of the Western world’s untold stories. Stories of great wealth changing hands, real or apocryphal, are legendary. Art in India, on the other hand, had little recognition beyond the remarkable miniatures from the Mughal and Rajput courts that were mostly in museum collections in Britain, or held as registered treasures with collectors in India. Most miniatures and other objects of art that were regularly sold at auctions in the West were rarely of equal quality, and were mostly the spoils of conquest � taken off to ol’ Blighty by opportunists.

The phenomenon of modern art is a little over a hundred years old in the country. Raja Ravi Varma of the Western painting style that was greatly favoured at the time by Parsis, businessmen and royal families, earned him � and his studio, with acolytes filling in for him � a large number of commissions. European painting traditions began to be taught at art schools all over the country, but artists continued to seek an identity that was Indian rather than Continental. The traumas of Partition and the lack of patronage meant that painters took a back seat for a few decades, despite the (mostly failed) attempts to form collectives that sought to achieve an intellectual renaissance.

The recent rise and rise of prices for Indian art in the domestic and international arenas is a correction, in part, of that anomaly. Domestic buying of modern art began when the ranks of the wealthy swelled in the wake of rapid economic growth. An NRI market developed soon as Indians overseas came into their own. But prices have continued to rocket, and Indian art has found new western buyers, at a time when the global economy is consumed by problems. In the developed world, art has always been a hedge against inflation, the rarity of buying power often in inverse proportion to escalating costs. No one has been quite able to explain with any degree of authority this relationship between financial markets and art prices, so it must be presumed that when times are bad, good art brings a little cheer to one’s mental make-up.

Whatever the reason(s), over the last decade the spiralling interest in Indian art � among collectors in India, NRIs and, recently, international buyers too � has created an industry around it that, despite the global economic slowdown, continues to remain buoyant. Galleries in India are booming, collectors are bidding at auctions to bring back to India treasures such as Raja Ravi Varma’s works, and Indian artists such as F N Souza and S H Raza are not only sustaining major sales for auction houses Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonham’s, but commanding prices that are at par with the likes of Damien Hirst. Nor is interest limited to the moderns; it is also spread among the contemporaries, younger artists who have barely two decades of work to show but who are already prized at international biennales and fairs. That they are being swept up by international collectors has gained them a new recognition for their avant-garde art. And the experts say there is no fear any time soon that the prices of Indian art are likely to stagnate.

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