“An Untitled Legacy” An Exhibition at Nine Fish Art Gallery: Manohar Mhatre
“An Untitled Legacy”, an exhibition by Manohar Mhatre, is being presented at the Nine Fish Art Gallery, Byculla, Mumbai from the 07th- 26th February 2020 from 10.30A.M to 7.30P.M.
The heavy presence of The Progressive Movement continues to live in and colour the minds of each of us in the art world in India. And it is usually presumed that while the legacy lives on, the artists have all gone. Thus it is all the more interesting than the one remaining artist of that set, Manohar Mhatre, now 89, is still living and practicing.Chosen to have long self-marginalized himself, he is finally showing his works in a retrospective solo after decades!
Mhatre has been gently persuaded to bring forth and display 50 years of his works. To view his works at this show is to sense the links that have remained and continue to guide the history of Indian abstract painting. The intertextuality that his canvases exhibit and the seeming arguments that Mhatre’s paintings have with the earlier master’s works, as well as the many different technical and philosophical paths that Mhatre takes them down – is a history in colour that no interested mind can afford to miss. For Mhatre, it seems like almost Destined to carry the legacy of The Progressives on his lean, albeit talented, shoulders to the show is like viewing the history of Indian abstract art.
