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- The author is a writer and teacher with an active interest in the arts. She has been the Arts Editor for the Times of India since 1991 and is currently editing an Encyclopedia on Culture. Ms. Sengupta is a passionate storyteller who reveals intimate knowledge of her subject matter. Towards the beginning, she describes artistic life during a time when Krishna Reddy lived in Paris. It was the 50’s and Krishna had previously been living in London while working under the guidance of Henry Moore. Artists interrelated among the numerous cafes. “Almost every Sunday he met Brancusi.” Parisian artists “were regulars in the cafes where they would discuss their travels in distant lands, their art in all its colors and life in all its shades...There was passion and involvement in the air. There was excitement in polemics. Increasingly, fierce debates would rage on one issue or another...From them, Krishna understood that, in order to be a true artist, one has to be a thinker.”
This beautiful book is complemented by numerous black-and-white and colored photographs of Krishna’s work through the years as well as reminiscing photographs of well-known and not-as-well-known friends and associates from different continents. The narrative reflects on this artist’s various periods of personal search and growth during a time of change. The art world was accelerating into the modern era and the avant-garde was creating spontaneously from the guts. “They were all looking for new ways to express their freedom.”
The image on the cover of this book is apropos. It shows the hand of the Mr. Reddy holding a burin while incising the surface of a plate. The photo becomes symbolism for all creators who express themselves through their medium of choice. The contents include an impressive pictorial depiction of the artist struggling to make sense of chaos in pursuit of imagery. The narration portrays Mr. Reddy as a nascent artist systematically trying to break from his past in pursuit of the id. As such, it becomes the story of every artist’s quest to experience, analyze, explore, develop, and then connect one’s maturing sensibility towards a personal and modern aesthetic vision. The goal is to create a unified body of work that reflects the observation of one’s time.
Krishna grew up surrounded by nature in a village that survived on the comfort of repetitive routines. The inhabitants got up with the sun and went to bed with the moon. As a young man, Krishna seems to have had “an innate curiosity” and an inquiring mind. Accordingly, he began to question certain steadfast norms, seeking answers to things he didn’t then comprehend. The author states that Mr. Reddy would wander “inward, layer after layer...trying to unravel the life force of being...to get to the essence of life.” His recognized prints, “reduce a visual perception to a schematic structure or structural order”. At some point, he “went through certain mystical experiences”, eventually dissociating himself from all organized religions.
Printmaking and sculpture are his two primary loves. Initially, Mr. Reddy was a sculptor by nature. “Sculpture had a special charm - a challenge for Krishna possibly because it was the predominant mode of artistic expression in India” and was visible everywhere. When he eventually gravitated towards printmaking, he methodically “gouged and dug through the plate... He began to regard the intaglio plate as a piece of sculpture.” The eminent printmaker, Stanley Hayter states that for Krishna, “The plate is sculpture in itself and its amplification is made possible by print.”
This is the biography of an exceptional man living through exceptional times. It’s the story of a thinker and a seeker of truth who disjoined from the comfort of his surroundings. For this artist, “art making has always been an expression of lived experiences and a learning experience”. With the personality of a dissenter and embedded with the philosophical bent of ancient Indian wisdom, he traveled out of his rural, rather unchanging environment and into the era of modern art then erupting in Europe and America.
Throughout his life, teachers, friends and associates he met encouraged Krishna. It became natural for him to teach others. He spent numerous years teaching at Atelier 17 in Paris, and has been a Professor and the Director of Graphics at New York University for many years.
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