A solo exhibition showcases the late artist Prabhakar Barwe’s rich artistic journey, and his stylistic evolution from tantric symbolism to surreal abstraction
Untitled, Ink and Pencil on Paper
A post-progressive, pre-contemporary-era painter through his career, Prabhakar Barwe works were considered far ahead of his time and transcended traditional creative norms. His artistic journey is currently being celebrated in a solo exhibition. “We were fortunate to acquire a single collection of his works on paper, covering various styles of his practice—both academic and quintessential—and decided to add a few more from our inventory,” shares Puneet Shah, director at art gallery Akara.
Born in Nagaon in 1936, Barwe graduated from Sir JJ School of Art in 1959, joining the Weavers’ Service Centre (WSC) in then Madras, where fine artists were invited to renew the dying art of textiles. A couple of years later, he was posted at the centre’s branch in Varanasi, a city ripe with tradition and culture, where his artistic style took a clear turn after being exposed to tantric philosophy and design. Though a firm believer in the present, reading horoscopes became a hobby, and symbols and elements from it found a distinct place on his canvas.
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Prabhakar Barwe
“He was then transferred to the Bombay outpost of the WSC in the 1970s,” explains Shah of the bulk of the drawings and watercolours on display, “where his thematic and stylistic preoccupations underwent a change. Newly interested in space as a metaphysical concept, the city—with its memories and landscape—drew him to reimagine modes of perception and composition, reflecting truths that appeared to him through the use of form, space and colour. The fluid relationship between an object, an idea, and its translation into an image started grasping his pictorial language.” The earliest watercolour in the exhibition is from Barwe’s tantric period, through the 1960s, which employs geometric patterns (that echo his work as a textile designer) overlayed with symbolic figuration with the World Turtle or Vishnu’s Kurma avatar, and a bright sun against a background of mauve bands.
“He was an iconic figure in the realm of Indian art; a rare cerebral artist concerned with the language of painting rather than images and signs,” says Shah. “He used conceptual devices of surrealism by placing a series of ordinary objects and ephemeral shapes into unusual and unique compositions.”
Dedicated minimalistic designs and empty space set Barwe’s works apart. Of particular interest are three paintings from the 1990s, completed shortly before the artist’s passing in 1995. Two particularly exemplify the style that has become synonymous with his unique vision. “Landscapes are depicted with objects that defy their natural proportions, eliciting a sense of eerie and dreamlike connections. They reflect Barwe’s assimilation of abstract, surrealist, Indian miniature painting, and European master influences, while maintaining an independent and unbound approach.”
An untitled painting of his studio takes us into a realistic depiction of an artist’s workspace. “The modesty of the arrangement creates a mood of contentment, suggesting this is all an artist needs to be happy. Barwe himself adhered to a philosophy of simple living, one from which the art world has moved a great distance in the years since his death, heightening the sense of nostalgia contained in the painting,” Shah muses.
WHAT: Prabhakar Barwe: Patterns, Symbols, Objects
WHERE: Akara Modern, 1st floor, 4/5 Churchill Chambers, 32 Mereweather Road, Colaba
WHEN: May 9 to June 1, from 11 AM to 6:30 PM between Tuesday to Saturday
CONTACT: 77770 96686
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