| Born in 1924
K. G. Subramanyan is a multifaceted artist. He is recognised not only as a painter, muralist and a printmaker but also as a scholar and a teacher of art. Subramanyan grew up in Kerala and Madras at a time when theosophy and nationalist swadeshi sentiments dominated India. He was imprisoned by the British for taking part in the famous 1942 Quit India Movement. On his release, his family sent him to Santiniketan, near Calcutta to pursue his interest in art at the Kala Bhavan. Founded by the famous poet Rabindranath Tagore, the educational system at Santiniketan was based on Indian culture and moral values. This was a liberating experience for the young artist. Under the tutelage of eminent artists like Nandalal Bose, Binode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij, he learnt to acknowledge three basic concepts on which to base his art - 'Nature, Tradition and Individuality.' These ideals were to stay with K. G. Subramanyan despite his exposure to Western Modernism. K. G. Subramanyan has achieved a successful synthesis of India's linear folk tradition and modernism. His sense of design, especially the manner in which he plays with pictorial space by filling the entire surface with Indian fauna and flora, makes his paintings vibrant and rooted in Indian spirit.
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