Top five works at India Art Festival

The India Art Festival at Thyagraja Stadium in Delhi is a cameo of the small is beautiful concept and its founder Director Rajendra is an authority in the art of explorations as well as a well-heeled art aficionado.

With 39 art galleries and 470 artists from 7 countries and 30 cities, it has works that are a mixed bag of sorts. Among best works are the three majestic abstracts by Achuthan Kudallur at Sara Arakkal Gallery from Bengaluru, G.R. Santosh and Sayed Haider Raza at Pioneer Art Gallery, Delhi.

Finest of all is Chennai dweller Achuthan Kudallur's moody abstraction – a leitmotif in the language of an intellectual aesthete. An author of Malayalam short stories, a thinker and a man of deep introspection Kudallur's work is a lesson in the leitmotif of abstraction that is born out of a journey and not just texture and tonality. It is his dark sombre palette of earth and mineral tones that arrests for its technique as well as the spontaneity of grammar and gravitas.

Santosh the Shaivite and founding father of Neo-Tantric school of thought painted extensively in the Neo-Tantric form of painting which emanated after he visited the Amarnath cave in South Kashmir in 1964. Done in pleasant incandescent shades with distinct planes this work echoes the meditative origins of Tantra ('tantra shastra') which is part of the agama (divinely revealed) Shastra texts.

Pioneer Gallery Delhi – Praveen Upadhye also had a classic Raza belonging to the 'Germination' series. Done in earth and mineral tones, it reflects Raza's shift from his early expressionist style to the geometric.

The circle becomes less of a graphical component and more of a central point representing concentrated energy. What arrests is the deep ripple of colour and contour speaking to us about the core of mortality and immortality.

Among sculptures the best work was an aluminium horizontal panoramic work titled 'In Dreams' by sculptor Chittranjan at Art Zolo from Mumbai. A sequential arrangement of humans adds to the lyrical cadences of the work that echoes the brilliance of composition and the essence of elegance.

In many ways it makes us

think of cubist ideations of translating imagery it also speaks of the early modernist contours that were used by artists in the 'Kalighat Pat' series what endears is the interlocking of figures and the placement of the figures along a linear plane.

Galleries that come from all parts of the country could be a little more professional about keeping high-resolution images for media. Having works of art is one thing but delivering efficiency and professionalism on time is vital in the art market.