Pakala Tirumal Reddy (1915–1996) was an Indian artist. He was the fifth child born to Ram Reddy and Ramanamma at Annaram village,

Karimnagar district Karimnagar district is one of the 33 districts of the Indian state of Telangana. Karimnagar city is its administrative headquarters. The district shares boundaries with Peddapalli, Jagityal, Sircilla, Siddipet, Jangaon, Hanamkonda district and ...

Telangana Telangana (; , ) is a States and union territories of India, state in India situated on the south-central stretch of the Indian subcontinent, Indian peninsula on the high Deccan Plateau. It is the List of states and union territories of India b ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. He received his diploma in

painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...

from J. J. School of Art,

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

in 1939. He married Yashoda Reddy on 9 May 1947, and she completed a master's of art and Ph.D. degrees and authored over 22 compilations and novels.

Work

P T Reddy played a role in the introduction and the evolution of the so-called "

Modern Art Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...

" of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

to India. He formed a group of ‘Bombay Contemporary India Artists,’ branded ‘Young Turks’, in 1941. This group of five painters was formed six years before the ‘

Progressive Artists' Group The Progressive Artists' Group (PAG), was a group of modern artists, mainly based in Bombay, from its formation in 1947. Though it lacked any particular style, there might be said to have been a move towards a synthesis of influences from Indian ...

’ formed in Bombay in 1947. Reddy started with realistic style and at the end of the 1930s. His original style was influenced both by traditional India paintings and

Post-Impressionism Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction ag ...

. A process of integration occurred with various ‘isms’ in his work. He created works in water colour,

oils An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...

etching Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...

s and

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 sc ...

s. Reddy's Srichakra engraving on

aventurine Aventurine is a form of quartz, characterised by its translucency and the presence of platy mineral inclusions that give it a shimmering or glistening effect termed ''aventurescence''. Background The most common color of aventurine is green, but ...

stone has a

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental syste ...

‘sri’ in the centre, emphasizing both his title and the form of the yantra. Two figures overlay the

Sri Yantra The Sri Yantra, Shri Yantra, or Shri Chakra is a form of mystical diagram (''yantra'') used in the Shri Vidya school of Hinduism. It consists of nine interlocking triangles - four upward ones which represent Shiva, and five downward ones represen ...

, their heads opposite one another at top and bottom, their bodies joined in sexual union in the centre. Reddy arranged their arms in a circular fashion reinforcing the lotus form, but their legs are not symmetrical: the legs of the bottom figure form a ‘V’ with the feet flanking the head of the top figure while the legs of the upper figure bend at the knees and splay outward, echoing the two directions of the triangle of the Sri Yantra. About 1970, Reddy began painting Tantric themes from Indian mythology. In his work, there are see connections and parallels to a wide range of other neo-Tantric artists, including G. R. Santosh, S.H. Raza, Mahirwan Mamtani, and Biren De, and thus he serves as an entry point and guide to the works of Indian artists.

Style

Reddy's paintings from the 1940s showed a struggle to maintain his identity as Indian by choosing subject matters that were undeniably Indian, yet depicted in a variety of modern European styles. After

independence Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...

in 1947, many Indian artists including Reddy re-examined India's own art traditions. Reddy's work began growing more abstract and started to reflect

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

and Tantric symbols and structures. However, many of his works are secular, modern abstractions that echo their original religious sources. Reddy engaged in dialogue with contemporary life and politics, in his

moon landing A Moon landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both crewed and robotic missions. The first human-made object to touch the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2, on 13 September 1959. The United St ...

series, Nehru series, and other works touching on

poverty Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little income. Poverty can have diverse social, economic, and political causes and effects. When evaluating poverty in ...

, labor movements, and the social changes wrought by India's Independence. Because of his use of the neo-Tantric idiom, his explorations of historical concerns such as these became dehistoricized and abstracted. For artists struggling with being both modern and Indian in the 1960s and 1970s, neo-Tantric imagery provided a solution, indicating a path through the abstraction/representation bind and retaining both a universality of form and a specificity of

national identity National identity is a person's identity or sense of belonging to one or more states or to one or more nations. It is the sense of "a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language". National identity ...

Awards and honors

Reddy won the Dolly Cursetji award for murals; Fellowship Government of India; 'Asthana Chitrakar' of the Andhra Pradesh Government, and member of the General Board of

Indian Council for Cultural Relations The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), is an autonomous organisation of the Government of India, involved in India's global cultural relations, through cultural exchange with other countries and their people. It was founded on 9 Apri ...

. His works have been exhibited in the U.K., United States, Soviet Union, Sweden, Switzerland and Greece, and represented in the collections of the Royal Palace, London, N.G.M.A., New Delhi, and many other institutions. Reddy's books were Portfolio of Drawings, Paintings and Sculptures in 1941, Contemporary Painters in 1941, 40 Drawings in 1941, and Kiss Volume I in 1968. St.Mary College of Maryland has a collection of his works in the Boyden Art Gallery. Reddy's major work was done during the freedom struggle, and then during the muscle-flexing that occurred while the

Indian diaspora Overseas Indians (IAST: ), officially Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs) are Indians who live outside of the Republic of India. According to the Government of India, ''Non-Resident Indians'' are citizens of Indi ...

was building its own identity. He produced around 3000 paintings in his lifetime. He died in 1996 and was survived by his daughter, Professor Lakshmi Reddy, who is also an artist. She runs the Sudharma Art Gallery in Hyderabad, along with her husband and her two children.

Exhibitions

1941 First group exhibition, Contemporary Painters of Bombay, Bombay 1940 First solo exhibition, Bombay Art Society Salon, Bombay 1943 Solo exhibition, Bombay Art Society Salon, Bombay 1955 Annual exhibition, Hyderabad 1956 Solo exhibition, Bombay 1957 Solo exhibition, All India Industrial Exhibition Grounds, Hyderabad 1968 1st International Triennale, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi 1976 Retrospective,

Kala Bhavan Kala Bhavana (Institute of Fine Arts) is the fine arts faculty of Visva-Bharati University, in Shantiniketan, India. It is an institution of education and research in visual arts, founded in 1919, it was established by Nobel laureate Rabindran ...

, Santiniketan and Sudharma Modern Art Gallery, Hyderabad 1983 Solo exhibition on Tantra, West Germany 1985-86 Neo Tantra: Contemporary Indian Painting, Fredrick S. Wight Art Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles 2004 Manifestations II, organised by Delhi Art Gallery, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai and Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi

International Exhibitions

Triennale India Air India Exhibitions in Australia British Art Festival U K British Prints Biennale U K Art Exhibition in Japan

Collections

Buckingham Palace Buckingham Palace () is a London royal residence and the administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is often at the centre of state occasions and royal hospitality. It ...

, London J.J. School of Art, Mumbai

Rashtrapati Bhavan The Rashtrapati Bhavan (, rāsh-truh-puh-ti bha-vun; ; originally Viceroy's House and later Government House) is the official residence of the President of India at the western end of Rajpath, Raisina Hill, New Delhi, India. Rashtrapati Bh ...

, New Delhi College of Art, New Delhi

Salarjung Museum The Salar Jung Museum is an art museum located at Dar-ul-Shifa, on the southern bank of the Musi River in the city of Hyderabad, Telangana, India. It is one of the notable National Museums of India. Originally a private art collection of the ...

, Hyderabad

Lalit Kala Akademi The Lalit Kala Akademi or National Academy of Art (LKA) is India's national academy of fine arts. It is an autonomous organisation, established in New Delhi in 1954 by Government of India to promote and propagate understanding of Indian art, i ...

, Hyderabad

, New Delhi National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi Parliament House, New Delhi

Tata Fundamental Research Institute Tata or TATA may refer to: Places * Jamshedpur, a city in Jharkhand, India also known as Tatanagar or Tata * Tata, Hungary, a town in Hungary * Tata Islands, a pair of small islands off the coast of New Zealand * Tata, Morocco, a city in Tata ...

, Mumbai Boyden Gallery, St. Mary's College of Maryland

Sources

* http://ngmaindia.gov.in/sh-pag.asp * Appasamy, Jaya, ‘The Painters of the Transition’, 25 Years of Indian Art * A history of Indian painting: the modern period By Krishna Chaitanya PP.261,279 * Painting Sculpture & Graphics in the Post-Independence Era, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, (1972), pp. 6–9. * Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Provincializing Europe, Princeton: Princeton University Press, (2000). * Kapur, Geeta, �
When Was Modernism in Indian Art?’
When Was Modernism? New Delhi: Tulika, (2000), pp. 297–323. * Mookerjee, Ajit, Tantra Art: Its Philosophy and Physics, New Delhi:Ravi Kumar, (1966).https://www.amazon.com/Tantra-Art-Its-Philosophy-Physics/dp/8171672582 * https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2828821M/40_years_of_P.T._Reddy's_art. * http://www.minusspace.com/tag/pt-reddy/ * http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?from=salesummary&intObjectID=4777573&sid=b527262f-e9c9-43e5-bd77-3e1f4721f7af {{DEFAULTSORT:Reddy, Pakhal Tirumal 1996 deaths 1915 births Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art alumni People from Karimnagar district Modern painters Fellows of the Lalit Kala Akademi Painters from Andhra Pradesh