Avinash Chandra: A Retrospective

Solo show at Osborne Samuel LLP/Berleley Square Gallery. 2006
Date: 2 November, 2006 until 18 November, 2006

Osborne Samuel LLP/Berkeley Square Gallery, 23a Bruton Street, London W1J 6QG was the venue for Avinash Chandra: A Retrospective, held 2 - 18 November 2006. Taking place some 25 years after the artist’s death, this was a substantial showing of his work, coming with a sizeable, extensively illustrated catalogue. Catalogue Preface, by Peter Osbourne, Director Berkeley Square Gallery/Osborne Samuel LLP, as follows:

“The gallery has been showing Indian contemporary art for some years and we are at last recognising one of the greatest of the Indian artists who made their way to London in the last half century. Indeed Avinash Chandra was described in a BBC TV documentary on the artist as a unique talent, making a new leap, revitalizing Indian art and standing for something very important.

Chandra made a significant impact on the London art scene when he arrived in 1956. He brought with him the iconography of the Indian townscape, of course principally the roofs and spires of Shimla, his home town. Soon his work underwent a radical change. Liberated by his new surroundings the structures of his painting became more expressive and organic; figures emerged as he began to emphasise the vitality and fecundity of the female form. This was strikingly different to what was happening with Indian art at the time. and the rest of his life his work is defined by a daring spontaneity and exuberance which characteries the man and the artist.

The exhibition depends entirely on the generous support of Valerie Murray-Chandrawjho has entrusted her late husband’s estate to us. When we first visited Valerie we had no idea of the scale and complexity of the work that the artist had left behind. We are still nowhere near completing the archive of all the paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, notebooks, scrapbooks and other ephemera. His productivity and versatility was truly extraordinary.”

»  Avinash Chandra: A Retrospective

Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 2006

»  Avinash Chandra: A Retrospective private view card

Invite relating to an exhibition, 2006