Dawn of the democracy for independent artists

Mumbai Art Fair, a contemporary Art fair for independent artists is making a grand entry in the Art Market with 250 exhibitor artists in 130 air-conditioned booths at Nehru Centre.

More than 1500 paintings in various mediums such as oils, acrylics, water colour, pastels, earth colours and sculptures in stone, metal, ceramics by 250 talented artists are selected for presentation in this debut edition of Mumbai Art Fair. The fair is offering wide variety of ‘art choices’ at economical rates.

This year, regular names in the art fair circuit exhibiting at MAF are artists Prakash Bhende, Prabhu Joshi,Shantkumar Hattarki, Shashikant Patade, Pratima Sheth, Jyoti Hattarki, Minakshi Patil along with talented younger lot of Smita Shrivastava, Anuja Sane, Rohan Sonavane, Asif Hossain, Arti Saxena, Anand Kamdar, Vijay Yadav, Sonal Salekar, Shreekant Potdar, Seema Oza, Sejal Zaveri, Antra Srivastava, Shiva Wanewadikar and others who will mesmerise the viewers with their varied creative output.

The works of Anand Kamdar, Aakash Khandare, Anita Tiwary, Archita Shah, Pratima Sheth, Ila Shah, Sandesh Darne, Shan Re, Smita Srivastava, Sonal Gandhi are kind of simplifications of reality in which artists have eliminated the details from recognisable objects leaving only the essence or some degree of recognisable form, representing things that aren't visual, such as an emotion, sound, or spiritual experience.

Elephant or Gajaraj, the symbol of strength and power, also recognised with ‘Lord Ganesha’ s portrayed by Dipali Deshpande and Dipayan Ghosh in their distinct style whereas artist Hester highlights creative life force through is depiction of Python. Arti Saxena’s artwork, reminiscent of pointillism, the work made of numerous daubs and dots of paint which together form the light and shade of the exquisite work and Rohan Khuntale’s quite conceptual work are replete with a story or narrative quality.

Senior artist Prakash Bhende recreates the vibrancy of Ajanta paintings through his works displayed at Mumbai Art Fair. Antra Shruti Srivastava, Darshan Mahajan, Archana Sharma, Neha Agrawal, Niyati Amlani, Pratibha Goel, Seema Oza, Shalini Gupta, Sonal Salekar, Sushma Oza, Vineet Kaur exhibiting at MAF illustrate their visual ideas in ‘figurative’ genre.

Paintings of Anuja Sane, Usmi Udeshi, Biju Mahajan, Hare Ram Yadav, Shashikant Patade, Gunjan Shrivastava will make the viewer feel that they are right there in the painting. The slightly different variant of landscape and flower-scape paintings by Anu Puri, Gaurav Dagar, S Brahmi, Sejal Zaveri and Yogini Sharma is one more attraction in the Mumbai Art Fair that will pull the crowd.

Artists Asha Shetty, Nirmal K, Reshma Venkatraman, Sharu Anjirbag have used colours and shading in a manner that suited low light ambience, seemingly providing the painting itself with its own source of light. The inspiring force behind the works by Deepa Hekre, Gajendra Sharma, Madhukar Mahajan, Pooja Kachela, Ram Kumar Ghising Tamang, Shyla Kowdle is such belief and faith that prompted them to create such an impressive and wondrous works of art which generates mystical aura around them. The amount of detailing in sculptures by Rohan Sonavan, Chandrasekar M and Romicon Revola is simply phenomenal. The traditional ‘Pichwai’ Paintings by Udaipur-based art gallery Beyond Square are also on display.

Bodhi Jagruti, Jagroop Kaur, Jumana Qayyumi, Kanan Kant, Madan Pawar, Mona Bhandari, Monali Shah, Neeraja Iyer, Radhika Joshi, Shreekant Potdar, Sindhu Nair, Suhas Chavan, Surabhi Gaikwad, Tuhina Chatterjee, Umesh Shebe, Uzma, Vaishali Tak, Vani Kulkarni, Venus Sanghvi, Vijaya Koteeshwaran, Zonobia Kagzi, Shweta Agarwal and others are exhibiting in the MAF which has always worked as a launching pad for painters, sculptors, performance artistes, etc.

Few more new faces introduced this year are Ami Gohil, Ankita Navghare, Anuradha Date, Bhairavi N, Gurmit, Indrani, Irfan Tabani, Jenson Joseph, Ketki Fadnis, Kunal Salvi, Leela Lopez, Manoj Sonavane, Naima Imtiaz, Paridhi Agarwal, Pratibha Kulkarni, Rajan Shah, Rajeshree Salunkhe, Shalaka Patil, Shila Mehta, Sukriti Datt and others.