Vivan Sundaram (born 28 May 1943) is an Indian contemporary artist. His parents were

Kalyan Sundaram Kalyan Vaidyanathan Kuttur Sundaram (11 May 1904 – 23 September 1992), also referred as K. V. K. Sundaram, was an Indian civil servant, who holds the record as the first Law Secretary (1948–58) of independent India and second Chief Election ...

, Chairman of Law Commission of India from 1968 to 1971, and Indira Sher-Gil, sister of noted Indian

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 ...

ist

Amrita Sher-Gil Amrita Sher-Gil (30 January 1913 – 5 December 1941) was a Hungarian-Indian painter. She has been called "one of the greatest avant-garde women artists of the early 20th century" and a pioneer in modern Indian art. Drawn to painting from an ear ...

. He is married to art historian and critic Geeta Kapur.

Training

Sundaram was educated at The Doon School, the Faculty of Fine Arts,

Maharaja Sayajirao University The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, formerly Baroda College, is a public university in the city of Vadodara, in Gujarat state, India. Originally established as a college in 1881, it became a university in 1949 after the independence of ...

Baroda Vadodara (), also known as Baroda, is the second largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It serves as the administrative headquarters of the Vadodara district and is situated on the banks of the Vishwamitri River, from the state capital ...

, and at

Slade School The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. In

he met the British-American painter

R. B. Kitaj Ronald Brooks Kitaj (; October 29, 1932 – October 21, 2007) was an American artist who spent much of his life in England. Life He was born in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, United States. His Hungarian father, Sigmund Benway, left his mother, Jeanne ...

,Vivan Sundaram
/ref> under whom he trained for some time.

Work

Sundaram works in many different media, including painting,

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 ...

printmaking Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed techniq ...

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...

, installation and video art, and his work is politically conscious and highly intertextual in nature. His works in the 1980s showed a tendency towards figurative representations, and dealt with problems of identity. His works constantly refer to social problems, popular culture, problems of perception, memory and history. He was among the first Indian artists to work with installation.Amrita Jhaveri: ''A Guide to 101 Modern & Contemporary Indian Artists''. India Book House: Mumbai 2005, p. 90. . His latest installations and videos often refer to his artistic influences, among them are

Dadaism Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Paris ...

Surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

, as well as more recent

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

and the works of Joseph Beuys. ''Re-take of ‘Amrita’'' is a series of black and white digital photomontages based on archival photographs from the Sher-Gil family. The original photographer was Sundaram's grandfather Umrao Singh. Sundaram reconfigured the photographs and recast the family in new roles, retelling family history.

References

External links

at Indian Art Circle

at Artists.org
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sundaram, Vivan 1943 births Living people Indian people of Jewish descent Indian male painters Indian photographers Indian people of Hungarian-Jewish descent Jewish painters The Doon School alumni Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda alumni Indian installation artists 20th-century Indian painters 20th-century Indian male artists

Training

Work

See also

References

External links