VADODARA: The
fine arts fraternity of Vadodara on Saturday paid homage to veteran artist
Krishna Reddy, a father figure for many artists, who passed away recently in New York.
Dean, senior artists, teachers and students of the
Faculty of Fine Arts,
M S University organised a condolence meeting where they remembered the artist’s contribution to the field of fine arts.
Born in Nandanoor in
Andhra Pradesh in 1925, Reddy had studied fine arts at the
Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan between 1942 and 47 and taught at the College of Fine Arts, Kalakshetra, Madras as the head of the arts department until 1949.
Thereafter he had joined the sculptor course at London’s Slade School of Art and studied under Henry Moore. In 1950, Reddy had moved to Paris and joined studio of Ossip Zadkine followed by Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17, which he later directed.
During his two decades in Paris, Reddy closely associated himself with the French International Avant Garde movement and participated in the Paris student protests in 1968.
Reddy was trained under influential teachers including Nandalal Bose and Ramkinkar Baij during his years as a student at Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan.
The artist also had a strong Baroda connection. A retrospective show of the artist had travelled to Baroda in January 2014 and was shown at the Faculty of Fine Arts. The only time professor Reddy had visited the Baroda and the faculty in person was in 1959.
Former professor Rini Dhumal had worked with Reddy in Paris. Vadodara’s veteran artist Jyoti Bhatt also knew him personally and met him in New York on two occasions while faculty’s present teacher Indrapramit Roy had participated in his workshop in 1986.
