Vivan Sundaram (born 28 May 1943) is an Indian contemporary artist. His parents were Kalyan Sundaram, Chairman of Law Commission of India from 1968 to 1971, and Indira Sher-Gil, sister of noted Indian modern artist

Amrita Sher-Gil Amrita Sher-Gil (30 January 1913 – 5 December 1941) was a Hungarian-Indian painter. She has been called "one of the greatest avant-garde women artists of the early 20th century" and a pioneer in modern Indian art. Drawn to painting from an ear ...

. He is married to art historian and critic

Geeta Kapur Geeta Kapur (born 1943) is a noted Indian art critic, art historian and curator based in New Delhi. She was one of the pioneers of critical art writing in India, and who, as ''Indian Express'' noted, has "dominated the field of Indian contemp ...

Training

Sundaram was educated at

The Doon School The Doon School (informally Doon School or Doon) is a selective all-boys boarding school in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India, which was established in 1935. It was envisioned by Satish Ranjan Das, a lawyer from Calcutta, who prevised a school mod ...

, the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of

Baroda Vadodara (), also known as Baroda, is the second largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It serves as the administrative headquarters of the Vadodara district and is situated on the banks of the Vishwamitri River, from the state capital ...

, and at Slade School of

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. In

he met the

British-American British American usually refers to Americans whose ancestral origin originates wholly or partly in the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Cornwall, Orkney, and the Isle of Man). It is primarily a demographic or histor ...

painter

R. B. Kitaj Ronald Brooks Kitaj (; October 29, 1932 – October 21, 2007) was an American artist who spent much of his life in England. Life He was born in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, United States. His Hungarian father, Sigmund Benway, left his mother, Jeanne ...

,Vivan Sundaram
/ref> under whom he trained for some time.

Work

Sundaram works in many different media, including painting,

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...

, printmaking,

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employe ...

installation Installation may refer to: * Installation (computer programs) * Installation, work of installation art * Installation, military base * Installation, into an office, especially a religious (Installation (Christianity) Installation is a Christian li ...

and

video art Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting ...

, and his work is politically conscious and highly intertextual in nature. His works in the 1980s showed a tendency towards figurative representations, and dealt with problems of identity. His works constantly refer to social problems, popular culture, problems of perception, memory and history. He was among the first Indian artists to work with installation.Amrita Jhaveri: ''A Guide to 101 Modern & Contemporary Indian Artists''. India Book House: Mumbai 2005, p. 90. . His latest installations and videos often refer to his artistic influences, among them are

Dadaism Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...

, Surrealism, as well as more recent

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

and the works of

Joseph Beuys Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( , ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and anthroposophy. He was a founder of a provocative art mov ...

. ''Re-take of ‘Amrita’'' is a series of black and white digital photomontages based on archival photographs from the Sher-Gil family. The original photographer was Sundaram's grandfather Umrao Singh. Sundaram reconfigured the photographs and recast the family in new roles, retelling family history.

References

External links

at Indian Art Circle

at Artists.org
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sundaram, Vivan 1943 births Living people Indian people of Jewish descent Indian male painters Indian photographers Indian people of Hungarian-Jewish descent Jewish painters The Doon School alumni Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda alumni Indian installation artists 20th-century Indian painters 20th-century Indian male artists

Training

Work

See also

References

External links