India Art Festival 6th Edition Delhi

After almost two years, the India Art Festival, a contemporary art fair, an annual get-together in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore is coming back to life with its Delhi edition This year it is bringing a feast of art viewings, and social mingling for artists, art writer and art buyers at Constitution club of India.

The shock of horrific covid devastation that brought the art and cultural activities to standstill is so devastating that artists participating at the art festival do not even wish to bring those bitter memories on their canvases. One hardly finds works reflecting pandemic related influences, as least now as of now.

There are very few art fairs across the world that provides platform to independent artists to exhibit along with the art galleries. India Art Festival is one such art fair since 2011 where artists have been consistently provided display booths annually with established master artists presented by art galleries from all over India. 

India Art Festival, this year is hosted from 07 to 10 April 2022 at Constitution Club of India, New Delhi. Here the art enthusiast and collectors can find the original works of art – paintings, drawing, prints, figurative & semi-abstract, landscapes, portraits, sculptures and all other forms of visual presentation of art. This year in the artists’ pavilion, close to 200 artists are presenting their artworks apart from 250 artists represented by 25 art galleries from all over India in Galleries Pavilion.

Every year, art enthusiast and art lovers visit the India Art Festival, strolling through the row of stalls showcasing amazing artworks by independent artists; few use this opportunity to talk to these young artists on their creative oeuvre, inspirations, subjects etc. In that way, IAF is an interactive space for both artists and visitors.

Every year artworks of all kinds of mediums, subjects and styles are seen at India Art Festival. This year, the ever-enticing art form landscape paintings by Atul Gendle, Nisha Dial, and Shashikant Patade are displayed in the art fest.  The works of Sambhu Karmakar and Rajat Kumar highlights atmospheric effect rather than merely capturing the flora and fauna.  Manju Shrivatsa and Tejal Jangda’s flowerscapes evokes lyrical quality whereas Prachee Vashistha’s ‘conversations’ in watercolour tilt towards surrealism. Sanjay Chakraborty’s works are the slight variant of landscape genre in which either other figures are infused in the foreground or have different narrative than what is overtly visible. Debabrata Basu’s works are confluence of stylized wildlife genre with contemporary cubist structure fused together. Narahari Bhavandla’s flaccid figures, tribal women with parrots  are executed dexterously. Manoj Darekar, Aditi Chakraborty, Manmeet  Bassi and Subrata Acharya bring their visual connotations in the semi-abstract idiom.

Ganesha, the ‘Lord of beginning’, also known as the Aadibeeja, the primordial seed of creative force is painted by Shweta Rukme, Pratibha Goel, and Rupa Purkayastha. Babita Satpati, Pratima Abhange, and Chethana Ravi’s paintings too evoke spiritual vibrations and makes the viewer to take a second look. 

This year the Artists’ Pavilion displays many unknown talents who have brought out their expressions in the form of paintings and sculptures to entice the ever changing palette of the art connoisseurs. On display are landscapes, abstracts, religious and spiritual paintings, exquisite figurative works and even some stilllifes. When one is awarded with such an eclectic platter of art works, it is only natural that the viewers are spoilt for choices.

Artists Abha Sharma, Arpita Goyal and Alka Pandey present their engagements with the abstract language, to present layered, fragmented and highly textual and textural works. While Deepali Roongta and Prakash Bal Joshi presents a pattern and colour fields of cool tones in their works which attempt to conceal and reveal at the same time.

Within the Artists Pavilion, one would find a moment of peace and tranquility if one went looking for it among the purely pious and spiritual expressions of the artists. Spirituality is inadvertently linked with divinity and when artists paint their beloved deities with as much love and devotion as they do a landscape or an abstract, the art work becomes an offering of worship. Artist Anuradha Singh, Bhagwat Murhekar, Kanchan Mahante, RK Pattnaik, Sanjay Satpute, Tejal Aikyam present artworks that can have numerous interpretations but the common thread that bind all these together is spiritual vibrations and aura that connects viewers with them.

While realistic styles elucidate and articulate the stories in the minds of the viewer, relating the work of art to them directly, some artists have chosen to take it as a contemporary language of their expressions. Artist Milind Varangaonkar, Santosh Patil,  Om Thadkar, Zamminlun Singson,  Sumitra Ahlawat and Vishal Tungar’s works are done in realistic genre, presenting accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of characters, nature and contemporary life. Niloy Sen’s symbolic presentations, Simple Mohanty Pan’s works titled toward pop art, Disha Gandhi’s geometric structures are an added attraction in the artists pavilion. 

Sonali Maitra Paul, Sukhmani Kaur, Vaishali Rastogi Sahni, Bindu Suneja, Diti Mistry, Neetu Singh, Ronak and Shilpa Surana are showcasing sculptural works in the art festival.

Gautam Patole, Jalpa Patel, Komal Thoria, Madhavi Bhaskar and Sadashiv Sawant are few artists exhibiting at the art festival who are masters in black and white, monochromatic executions, demonstrating that richness, depth & detailing can be achieved in the subtle manipulation of light and shadow.

Aayan Chakrabarti, Ashish Agrawal, Neelam Sethia, Neetu Singh, Suparna Sen, Kajal Rana, Nimish Jain, Rahul Batra, Rajitha Pasula, Raksha Keshri, Richard Anbudurai and Tejal Sodashi are few other artists who are presenting interesting, and complex compositions in the art festival.

It is interesting to see the amount of energy our artists put to generate so many artworks as evident from more than 3500 artworks displayed at the India Art Festival. IAF has been sort of become annual meeting point for all these young artists who missed it for two years.