Individual expressions

Two art shows that are worth a visit this week.

MANIFESTATIONSIV
Delhi Art Gallery, DLF Emporio, Vasant Kunj (011-46005300)
February 6-March 31

ManifestationsIV, the fourth in the bi-annual exhibition at the Delhi Art Gallery (DAG), opened at the gallery’s DLF Emporio space on Saturday. Its highlight is a selection from the gallery’s own collection — DAG has one of the largest repositories of 20th century modern Indian art — of one work each of luminaries of 20th century art, a work that establishes the artist’s oeuvre, high point or even, in some cases, something uncharacteristic from the largely-held view on the artist’s work.

This year’s exhibition has 75 such works from 75 important artists of the 20th century who have been hand-picked to represent the best of Indian art in this representational show that cuts across time, generations, mediums, regions and periods. Some of the artists in the show include K H Ara, S H Bakre, S H Raza, F N Souza, M F Husain, Satish Gujral, Ram Kumar, Akbar Padamsee, Amit Ambalal, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Avinash Chandra, Chittaprosad, Haren Das, the three Tagores — Abanindranath, Gagendranath and Rabindranath — Anjolie Ela Menon, Gogi Saroj Pal, Sohan Qadri, Jamini Roy, Himmat Shah and Gulammohammed Sheikh.

MYRIAD MOODS
Helmut Zwerger, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai
February 9-15

Helmut Zwerger is an Austrian dentist-turned-painter who specialises in celebrities. He’s painted Hollywood in his characteristic acrylic daubs, everyone from Danny De Vito and Arnold Schwarzenegger to Madonna, Elton John, Tiger Woods and Luciano Pavarotti — the last, along with portraits of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and John Glenn, US senator, even travelling out to space. These spent about 200 days at NASA’s ISS space shuttle under Russian cosmonaut and “space galleryist” Alexander Kaleri. He’s turned to the lesser stars, Bollywood actors, now and has spent the last few weeks painting the entire galaxy of them — Aamir Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Kajol, Kareena Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Rekha, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, and Sachin Tendulkar. And no, the stars didn’t sit for him, the paintings were done from posters and other publicity material. The portraits now go on show for about a week at the Jehangir Art Gallery.

Clearly Zwerger’s experience of painting Hollywood filmstars was what got him interested in Bollywood. India interests him a lot; the country is, he professes, a very mysterious place with a lot to offer. Having visited it thrice, he has decided that “India has everything”.