Payal Kapoor and Timsy Anand two veterans of Delhi have put together an art gala at Taj Palace on an entire floor and amidst the melange of works it was good to spot 108 Art Project’s Old Masters Avinash Chandra, Piraga Sagara, Chitamani Kar and Lancelot Ribeiro.
One recalls seeing Ribeiro at the India Art Fair with Grosvenor Gallery from London. The Souza familiarity settles upon you and then look closely at his landscapes in this small salon that runs for three days, finishes today.
History says Ribeiro moved to Britain in 1962, and he had held ten solo and group shows – including Ten Indian Painters, an exhibition sponsored by the Indian Writers Association and UNESCO which toured cities across India, North America and Europe.
In 1972, describing his early aesthetic influences, Ribeiro explained: ‘My first influences were the Churches and Statuary of the Catholic Church in Goa along with the symbolic ritual that went with it … The other and perhaps the strongest influence were the paintings of my brother 10 years senior … In early 65 there was a positive move to break from these first influences and work toward a more unified and organic style as opposed to the structural and linear aspect…’
Ribeiro lived in Hampstead and his landscapes have an English air.
His Untitled Townscape and Landscape are two riveting works that hold your gaze. His works are aesthetically and structurally sound in tone and tenor. We can see a fine sense of abstraction that defines both studies. He leaves the whiteness of the paper as a lacing of structural elements in his townscape while in his landscape he is content with a russet Sienna that speak of emotive evocations. When he creates buildings they seem more like silent sentinels of silence. In his landscape he infuses the warm world of colours reflected into each other, in the townscape we see the people less streets, the flowering tree, the road that never really searches or stretches into the interior ...