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May 10, 1996, New York, NY - Bose Pacia Modern presents an exhibition of paintings by New York artist
Natvar Bhavsar entitled
"Kajal and Kumkum". The show will run from May 22 to June 29. The gallery is located at 580 Broadway, 2nd Floor in SoHo. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 12-6 p.m. and by appointment. A reception with the artist will be held on 22nd of May at 6p.m. The public is invited.
For the past three decades, Natvar Bhavsar has been making important contributions to the international contemporary art scene. He is first and foremost a colorist. Color informs each individual painting and his body of work as a whole. Irving Sandler writes "[Bhavsar's] color is unique. One wonders about its source. He has spoken of his childhood experiences [in India], recollections of village festivals, of dry pigment decoration of the doorsills of Indian houses, of the piles of pigment in his uncle's fabric printing plant - persisting visual memories. The information is useful, but one does not need it to respond to the energy, the sensuousness, the lyricism of Bhavsar's color. This is the essential content of his painting."
The exhibition will begin with an intricately detailed collection of works on paper titled Kajal and Kumkum and conclude with large masterworks on canvas some measuring up to nine feet in height and twenty years in the making. Kajal and Kumkum, a series of jewel-like works on paper executed in 1987, have never before been exhibited in the United States. Art critic Kamala Kapoor described the Kajal of Bhavsar's work as "all that is dark and dense" and the Kumkum as "all that is vibrant and light". Other metaphoric interpretations of the title are limited only by imagination: "the interaction of the diurnal and nocturnal rhythms, the conflict of the sacred and the profane, the play of the mystical and the cosmic. For those intent on a more representational view, one can conjure up an image of the naked flame of a diya flickering in the engulfing darkness of a village night."
Natvar Bhavsar was born in Gothava, Gujrat, India in 1934. He received his M.F.A at the Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the John D. Rockefeller II Fellowship and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He is held in numerous important public and private collections.