Discover The World Of Shanti Dave Through DAG’s Exhibition: Neither Earth, Nor Sky

Discover the unique world of India’s first calligraphic modernist Shanti Dave through his larger-than-life abstract paintings at DAG, New Delhi. 

Shanti Dave, during the 1960s-70s, was among the most sought-after artists in the country, getting some of the most important commissions and awards. Commissioned to do a mural for Parliament House, New Delhi, in the mid-1950s, the turning point came when he travelled extensively to the US and Europe to work on murals for Air India in the 1960s. The artist recalls some delightful anecdotes from those times—such as borrowing money from F. N. Souza in London when he ran out of cash, living with Mohan Samant and dining on pizzas in New York when his passport, cash, air tickets, and other belongings were stolen. He also found a warm friendship in author Ved Mehta and sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar. 

If somewhere along the way he began to fade out of public memory, “In recent times interest in his work is once again rising with paintings coming up frequently in auctions,” said Ashish Anand, CEO and Managing Director of DAG. With the first-ever retrospective in New Delhi, interest in Shanti Dave is at an all-time high.

“Shanti Dave: Neither Earth, Nor Sky”, curated by Jesal Thacker, features over eighty works that investigate the artist’s unparalleled style and technique and, studies his unique visual language and persistent exploration of the word or Akshara, the theory of sound and the aesthetics of Bhava.

Accompanied by an eponymous book edited by Jesal Thacker with contributory essays from poet, essayist and script writer Udayan Vajpeyi, art writer Meera Menezes, and DAG’s Kishore Singh, the exhibition includes Dave’s rarely seen early figurative works made under the tutelage of N S. Bendre and K. G. Subramanyan at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, where he joined as part of its first batch in 1950 as well as his beeswax and encaustic canvases and layered watercolours.

The retrospective also highlights his role as a printmaker and muralist. Alongside large paintings from the 1970s—a period when he made his award-winning paintings that won him a gold medal at the third International Triennale-India where the jury comprised of Octavio Paz and Monroe Wheeler, director of exhibitions, MOMA, drawings, collages, and relief paintings in mixed media are other mediums that find a place in the exhibition and show the artist’s range and mastery over mediums and materials. For the first time, Dave’s stark black-and-white graphic watercolours on the Indo-Pak war, a body of work that is political and shows him as a humanitarian, are also being publicly exhibited.

With an unparalleled style and technique, he was India’s first major abstractionist to incorporate beeswax into his practice and his encaustic paintings often appear like sculptures in relief. A quiet, inward-looking person, Shanti bhai doesn’t talk much about his art, leaving the interpretation to art writers and scholars who find his work as mysterious as it is intriguing. 

When | 15th July - 10th September, 2023 (Monday - Saturday)
Where | 22A, Janpath Road, Windsor Place, New Delhi
Timings | 10:30 AM - 7 PM
Here’s Their Website | https://dagworld.com/shanti-dave.html

Skim Through Their Insta Feed | https://www.instagram.com/dag.world/