Simply bold and bright

Art-felt

He has been appreciated very highly by the art world and the world media for his abstract paintings. He has revolutionised traditional concepts of art in their very modern and appealing form, with a visual language of form, line and colour. Oil painting is a tough and time consuming medium, but Rama Rao’s dexterity and mastery is seen in his opulent oils, where he gives smooth silkiness and undulations of water colours to his oil paintings. His chromatic palette is the origin of his creative abundance, of his gusto in the realm of curvilinear oil paintings. His paintings are on display in almost all the galleries of the world, and in many private collections. Dr Abdul Kalam, as the president of India, after meeting Rama Rao, proclaimed in the Parliament that “he had the unforgettable experience of meeting an artist who had put his ineffaceable signature on international art world”.

Born in Gudivada of Andhra Pradesh, Rama Rao developed an intense liking for drawing as a young child. After his graduation from Andhra University and the Madras School of Arts and Crafts, he was offered a fellowship at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London.

Rama Rao was the first Indian to receive training under the scholarship scheme meant for artists from the Commonwealth countries. That is when, in 1962, he was struck by the abstract expressionist movement. As a natural consequence, Rama Rao shifted from figuration to abstraction and succeeded in wooing the muse of painting in his pursuit. As a student of art at the University of London, he was honoured by the Royal Academy in London with his one-man show during the second Commonwealth Biennial at London that brought him UK’s most prestigious Lord Croft Award and the title of the ‘Most Outstanding Artist of the Commonwealth’.

At a young age of 29, apart from reaching the zenith as an artist, he succeeded in achieving the dream of any artist — the acquisition of his works by the New York Museum of Art. Even with such international repute, he maintained his humility and tried to better himself. He developed a unique style of his own, keeping the elements of western art intact. In 1969, when he received a fellowship from the Tufts University in Boston to study abstract art forms, the American art scene was in a changing mode and Rama Rao was well equipped to form his own style. He combined what he calls ‘Indian lyricism’ and a sense of colour of Western forms. Max Wykes-Joyce, an art critic of UK said, “Rao, more than any other contemporary artist I know, achieves a perfect balance between east and west.”

With strong western artistic influence of Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Ganguin, Kokoschka and of two revivalist masters back home, Abanindranath Tagore and A R Chughtai, Rama Rao received art critics’’ acclaim that “his sense of colour, form and line lift his art from considerations of manner and technique into a context where it is seen as an important contribution to painting in the mid-twentieth century.”

While language is the fabric and strength of literature, colours form the beauty and life of paintings. The intensity of colour in Rama Rao’s paintings is a feast to the eye. His ultra marines, ochres, cobalt blues and deep orchid pinks make his paintings bright and bold. Rama Rao gives a beautiful texture to his work which is very difficult to get in oils.

Patricia Boyd Wilson of Christian Science Monitor, Boston, said of him — “Here is a man who can imply in abstract figurations the movement of clouds and rivers, the wetness of monsoon rains, the grace of dancing girls, and the drift of smoke under a rising sun. All this he conveys by washed down transparent oil pigment. Rama Rao’s palette is purely Indian.”

Rama Rao wields his pen as creatively as his brush — he is a published bi-lingual poet and an author. When his poetry and paintings vie with each other for appreciation with equal intensity and quality, one becomes absolutely compelled to love both with equal passion.

Rama Rao, as an art professor, has taught in many universities across the US. He was deeply admired and appreciated by both the faculty and students, and was awarded the coveted “Outstanding Educator of America, 1973”. He also taught at the London County Council, UK.

His brush is a magic wand that creates not any illusion but vibrant reality and visual magic, making him reach the heights and depths of the artistic realm. Rama Rama Rao has been honoured with innumerable awards in India and abroad. The Government of India honoured him with the highest civilian title, Padmashree, in 2001.

He is presently staying and painting in New Delhi. He is ‘painting for India in India’ as he plans to exhibit his recent works in major cities.