Avinash Chandra
Born in Simla on 28 August 1931, Avinash Chandra Studied Painting at Delhi Polytechnic, Where He Also Taught for a Few Years; His Students Included Paramjit Singh and Arpita Singh, Who Would Go on to Make a Name for Themselves in Later Years.
Throughout his career, Chandra’s recurrent theme remained the female body. He began with elegant line drawings which evolved through the 1970s into implicit, erotic, coloured drawings. Sexual imagery may have played a vital role in his art but was introduced as part of a much larger experience in a wider context. Employing the primitivist trope, Chandra often reduced female anatomy to shapes as though suspended in a space invaded by phallocentric forms.
Chandra was the first Indian artist to exhibit at one of the most important art events worldwide—Documenta in Kassel, West Germany, in 1964. Widely collected, especially by museums in the U.K., Chandra won fellowships in the 1960s from the John D. Rockefeller III Fund and the Fairfield Foundation.
