Conversations With Colour: K. G. Subramanyan

Uma Nair

Say Manida to any artist or collector of repute and their faces light up. But Kalpathi Ganapathi Subramanyan born of a Palghat Brahmin family at Mahe proved to purists and critics alike that he is one man who has fashioned the contemporary art sensibility in India like no one else at his retrospective at NGMA two years ago.

An artist who weaves into his sensibility images that echo folkloric, tribal, craft, Mycenaean, African and the Malayali idiom… the range of influences that one can trace in Subramanyan’s imagery in the latest series of reverse painting on glass at Art Heritage in Delhi is phenomenal. In an exclusive interview to Bodhi Buzz he reflects a wry sardonic humour, critical of the critic itself, he can make you feel as if 20 years of criticism is next to nothing and yet, this iconoclast, writer, sculptor and doyen of Shantiniketan reflects a mind that seems to absorb by a process of osmosis myriad influences to which he has been exposed.