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| J. D. Gondhalekar |
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Janardhan Dattareya Gondhalekar was born in 1909 in Amraoti in Maharashtra. After receiving his Diploma in Drawing and Painting from the Sir J,J School of Art in Mumbai, he spent a long stint in England honing his painterly techniques and skills at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and subsequently during his study at the Academie Julian in Paris. He also studied methods to restore paintings and art obiects at the Laboratoria Centrale des Musees de Belgique in Belguim under a Fellowship bestowed on him by the UNESCO in 1950.
Shri. J.D. Gondhalekar was efficient educator, administrator and cultural visionarie, who participated in instituting a whole gamut of projects to facilitate the development of the ongoing art scene. Recipient of several prestigious awards, this artist continued painting throughout his career, despite several professional commitments. Gondhalekar was Dean of the Sir J. J. School of Art from 1953-1959.
He wrote and broadcast widely on art and organized the State Art Exhibition of the Government of Bombay. Throughout his career he participated in art exhibitions both nationally and internationally in countries that included Belgium, Germany, England and Latin America. Besides he was the Art Director of the Times of India, the Dean of the Sir JJ School of Art in Mumbai and The Art Director of several films.
The strength of Gondhalekar's paintings lies in his capacity to pull together the formal techniques of European art practice and bind them with the mythic imagination of his indigenous environment. A whole array of sketches, nude figure drawings oils, water colours and works in gouache highlight his virtuosity as a painter.
Quite striking is his large oil on canvas portraying Rama and Sita with a combination of Impressionist and Expressionist use of light and emotive expression. The Hanuman series done in a modernized version of the illustrations of an illuminated manuscript are rendered in gouache. The controlled compositional weights and balances and the striking use of colour and the detailing of line, volume, form and structure bring to mind the formal training he had in Europe.
It is this quality of creating works that handled both European and Indian themes with a strong natural mastery of the aesthetic idiom that puts Gondhalekar in a class apart as an aesthete and artist, who gave his work a touch of maturity. |
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