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NEW YORK. - An exhibition
spanning the entire artistic career of New York based painter
Mohan Samant is scheduled to open at A Gallery in Chelsea in
Manhattan on Sept. 18.
Doyen of the Indian
art colony in New York, Samant's work is included in the collections
of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, the late Dr. Homi Bhaba of the
Indian Atomic Energy Commission, Russian painter Nicholas Roerich
and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
A Gallery was still
lately known as the “Wallace Galleries” and was the
venue of M.F. Husain's recent exhibition sponsored by Citibank.
The change of name
has followed a change of ownership at the gallery which specializes
in the contemporary arts of India.
Born in 1924 to
a landowning family in Samantwadi in Goregaon, near Mumbai,
Samant graduated from Sir J.J. School of Arts in 1951, winning
India's two most prestigious art honors in 1952, the gold medal
of the Academy of Fine Arts of Calcutta and that of the Bombay
Art Society.
He worked in Italy
for two years (1957-58) on an Italian government scholarship.
In January 1959, he came to New York on a Rockefeller grant.
He has made New York his home ever since. “Unlike any other
city in the world, except London and Paris, New York City has
on view art spanning 5,000 years of history.
The impetus for
my painting is the fusion of painterly expression of ancient
myths within the reality of contemporary art,” Samant told
India in New York, explaining the reason why he is so stimulated
by the city.
He says that despite
his long acquaintance with the art treasures of New York, he
must still visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art thrice, the
Museum of Modern Art twice, and the Guggenheim once a month.
“Just as Picasso
in the 20th century painting 'Guernica' used ancient Roman and
Greek images such as the centaur with images derived from the
violence of the Spanish civil war to create a painting which
is both contemporary and mythical, I fuse the symbols of Hindu
mythology and ancient Egyptian wall paintings with the modern
art world of New York City.”
“My esthetic
relationship to the vast visual resources of New York, from
antiquity to the present day, has helped form my unique style
of painting and serves to provide an ongoing stimulus to its
continuous development,” Samant said in a interview in
his colorful loft in Gramercy neighborhood, with an aviary
and an arboretum right in the middle of the hall.
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