(1909 - 1981)

Janardhan Dattareya Gondhalekar was born in 1909 in Amraovati in Maharashtra. After receiving his Diploma in Drawing and Painting from the Sir J. J. School of Art in Mumbai, In England he studied techniques and skills at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and 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 visionary. Recipient of several prestigious awards, this artist continued painting throughout his career. He wrote and broadcast widely on art and he participated in art exhibitions both nationally and internationally in countries includes Belgium, Germany, England and Latin America. 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. 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. He handled both European and Indian themes.