M. Sivanesan (1940-2015)

Art & Deal

The art world lost Sivanesan this year, a prolific artist of the times. He shall always remain an important name in Indian contemporary art. His indigenous subjects and his very selective colour palette marked his style.

He did not use his paintings to make statements as he felt that restricted him in many ways. His paintings were reflections of his personal mood at various points in time. ‘People’ were his favorite subjects. He appreciated the beauty that he saw in people.

He had three studios in New Delhi, Mumbai and Madras and has exhibited all over the world, being partial to New York where he showed his work every year. “New York is my favourite city and I love America,” he once said. Born in Madras (Chennai) in 1940, he joined the Madras Government College of Arts and Crafts in 1956. “I defied my parents by studying art. They wanted me to do something else. I remember admitting myself to the Madras School of Art in secret,” he says.

After a solo show in Chennai in 1963, he came to Delhi, where he found himself a total stranger, initially, with “nothing but his felicity with colours”. He started working with the Kumar Art Gallery soon and then, there was no looking back. His early works echo his personal experiences and encounters of the period: ‘power of bullocks, camels and power of the north Indian cattle and the countryside’. Sivanesan held about twenty solo and several group shows in India, as well as abroad, including London, USA, Canada, Japan and Thailand. He was a recipient of the Award at International Inter Church, New York, Royal Overseas Exhibition, London.

He took to sculpting much later in his career as an artist, “At 68, I am finally growing as an artist, expanding my horizons to sculpture after 40 years,” he stated in an interview. He called his ‘solid figures his latest form of self-expression that has a tangible feel’. He was an artist who wholly supported art as a business and was vocal about it. Sivanesan asserted that when an artist needs to earn his bread off his artwork, investment in art is a logical outcome and makes complete sense. It is the only way of encouraging and sustaining creativity in an unprecedently materialistic world. An honest opinionated and forthright person and a brilliant artist, he shall be greatly missed. May his soul rest in peace.