Rare Vijayanagar genre paintings come to city

Gurvinder Singh

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, October 11

It is difficult to imagine such intricate and meticulous line work with a brush in a drawing or painting. It took Manik V Kambar, a Karnataka-based torchbearer of Vijayanagar style of paintings, 32 years to achieve this skill. “It has been a long ‘tapasya’ for me to be able to attain this finesse,” he says.

His paintings are on display as part of the Miniature Painting Exhibition at Gallery Artmosphere. The group art exhibition comprises paintings by Kambar, Gurpreet Singh Mankoo and Kambar’s son Harsha. It will conclude tomorrow.

Thanks to the intricacy of his artwork, it takes more than 15 days to finish one painting, he says.

His painting was not only selected for an exhibition in the Netherlands but his work has also won him Lalit Kala Awards. One of his paintings has made it to the office of PM Narendra Modi, says Kambar.

Speaking about his Deccan-Vijayanagar style of paintings, he says this genre also has the Mughal influence. The genre largely has paintings of Hindu gods and mythology. “The hallmarks of this genre are flat colours, with very delicate and intricate drawings. These take a lot of hard work and patience, because of which this genre has become very rare these days,” he says.

“But I have developed a style of my own, as poses in my paintings are ‘tribhangi’, having more dynamic postures,” he says. The artist even makes colours on his own from stone-pigment and fine-tunes brushes to suit his style of painting. Some of the paintings on display during the exhibition are of gods and goddesses, including Shiva, Vishnu, Saraswati, Ganesha, Vayu, birth of Durga, Shanidev, Shukracharya, Brahspati, Indra Dev, Surya, Agni, Mangal and Rahu.

Gurpreet Singh Mankoo, who makes miniature paintings and specialises in the ‘Kangra’ style of painting, got in touch with Kambar around three years back. So impressed was he with Kambar’s work that he especially went to meet Kambar at Bengaluru. Since then, he has been learning and incorporating the Vijayanagar style of painting in his work as well.

“And now, my paintings are a unique combination of Vijayanagar and Kangra style of painting. Besides, it has the influence of the traditional folk art of Punjab,” he says. His work also made to an exhibition in the Netherlands. Because of his penchant for miniature work, Mankoo has also done restoration of paintings in the sanctum sanctorum of the Golden Temple, he says. Apart from his paintings of 10 avatars of Lord Vishnu, he is now making paintings of Sikh Gurus in Vijayanagar and Kangra styles, he says. His medium mostly is ‘gauche on paper’. He says he is happy that through his art, he is bringing together painting genres from the North and the South.  Paintings depicting different ‘ragas’ of Indian classical music in the Vijayanagar style have also been exhibited at the exhibition.