Under the auspices of the Chitari Academy, leading artists of Pune held an excellent exhibition of paintings at the Balgandharva Kaladalan from September 18 to 20. Here again Ganesh dominated since it's festival time. However, many paintings were devoted to other subjects, with each painter making a distinctive impression with his own style.The artists were - Sagar Pansare, Megha Patil, Veena Nadkarni, Bapusaheb Jhanjer, Shirish Deshmukh, Milind Phadke, Sunil Shelke, Mukund Kelkar, Shobha Patki, Vijay Kadam, Shrikant Kadam, Nilesh Pawar, Vishwanath Sable, Balasaheb Abhang and Chandrakant Ovhal and Murli Lahoti who convened the exhibition.
An important facet of the exhibition was the live demonstration given by selected artists, who explained the intricacies of oil painting to the gathered crowd, who took a deep interest and fielded questions to the artist after the session. ``The idea was to provoke interest in the young generation,'' said Ovhal, who had displayed some wonderful figurative paintings, ``and not all of us paint Ganesh so we put up paintings on different subjects too.'' Murli Lahoti's sweeping Ganeshs were a treat to see as was Veena Nadkarni's offbeat Ganesha sitting on the gadi dressed in Peshwa-style attire.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.