New Delhi: An exhibition entitled ‘The 100th Birth Anniversary Exhibition and Celebration: DHANRAJ BHAGAT (1917-1988).’ has begun in National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi today. The exhibition intends to acquaint the public with more than 400 works of Dhanraj Bhagat on the theme of ‘Journey from the Physical to the Spiritual’. The exhibition will be on displayed till 20th February 2018. Director General, National Gallary of Modern Art Shri Adwaita Gadanyak inaugurated it.
Eminent sculptor Padmashri Dhanraj Bhagat was born in 1917 in Lahore. He is undoubtedly one of the major sculptors in the Indian modern art movement. He studied at the National College of Arts (formerly known as Mayo School of Art), Lahore, securing a diploma in sculpture. He started his career as a faculty at the College of Art, New Delhi in 1947 and rose to the position of the head of the Sculpture Department and from where he retired in 1977. The unique style, which he perfected over the years, illustrates an amalgamation of national heritage and western artistic ideas and traditions. This reflects in his use of geometric shapes and colours. He experimented in several mediums such as wood, metal, terracotta, plaster of paris, paper pulp, stone, fiber glass etc. During the last years of his life, when he was too weak to sculpting, Bhagat produced a portfolio of drawings that also reflects his distinctive artistic vocabulary and it forms a major repository of this exhibition, celebrating the artist’s 100 year birth centenary at the NGMA, New Delhi.
