Over 30 galleries and 400 artists from across India, Singapore and the USA will feature in The India Art Festival to be held in Bengaluru— the second edition in the city— this weekend.
Founded in 2011 by Rajendra, an art writer and editor of the Indian Contemporary Art Journal (IAF), the festival is held annually in Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru. “It provides a platform for the seasoned art collector as well as the new art buyer who wants to acquire their first piece of art. We will have around 4,000 art works on display,” says Rajendra.
There will be paintings in acrylics, watercolours, original prints, installations and drawings in myriad styles with landscapes, figurative, abstracts, cityscapes, seascapes, urban and rural scenarios, portraits and more. Besides these, there will also be traditional paintings and warli art.
Rajendra says he started the India Arts Festival as there is no large infrastructure to promote art and sustain artists in India. “Having an annual festival such as this also gives artists from rural areas a chance to showcase their work.”
Being an art writer and critic, Rajendra says his interactions with artists gave him the opportunity to see some of their struggles first hand. “In a festival such as ours, beginners will get to meet architects, established artists and people from the corporate world.”
Some of the participating art galleries are Akanksha Art Gallery, Charvi Art Gallery, Green Footprint Art Gallery, H Art Gallery, Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Sara Arakkal Gallerie (all from Bengaluru) with ArtDesh Foundation, Artvista, House of Emerge (Mumbai), Gnani Arts (Singapore), Kalabhawan(Agartala) and Subodh Fine Art Studio (California, USA) to name a few.
The master artists who will be a part of the event include Sakti Burman, Yusuf Arakkal, Lalu Prasad Shaw, SG Vasudev, Laxman Aelay, Gurudas Shenoy, Laxma Goud, Jatin Das, Jogen Chowdhury, Manu Parekh, N S Harsha, P Gnana and Seema Kohli.
The festival will be held from December 8 to 11 at Kings Court, Palace Ground, Gate No. 5, between 11am and 8.30pm. Entry is free.
