Press Extracts

All the paintings of Rajendra Agarwal (AIFACS) are in watercolour. In his landscapes he uses the medium in two ways. The painstakingly done pieces look like coloured drawings and the colours here lack luminosity. But there are others, where the medium is used freely and conserves its nascent freshness, yielding pleasant panoramas of the earth after a shower. There are a few genre studies, some of them showing tragic experience generalised to have universal reference. In spite of the great difference in stature. some comparisons will be interesting. The figures in Frozen Grief may have greater appeal to an unsophisticated Indian sensibility than Ram Kumar’s Sad Town.

The finest of the Rajendra Agarwal’s watercolours is Seascape, a marvellous work that captures a scintillating, shimmering light. This one really hypnotises one Waiting, another fine work, has a stillness to it that delights the sage viewer. Console, Mist and many other entries also captivate us. His mind is really in tune with nature.

The tilt towards realism in the art of this established artist makes the work more palpable. Although his art is based on nature addition of horse, women, or background of a building makes an interesting composition. The fantasy is neatly woven by this artist while projecting man and woman, a crow and a building. In another painting Rajendra has depicted a woman on the swing in the garden. Here again the greenery of the place reflects the artist’s love for nature. Technically, Rajendra has achieved excellence and shows promising results. He has mastered the art of water colour painting. The stark colours are attractive in the paintings.

Twenty five water colour paintings by Rajendra Agarwal at AIFACS gallery, are 25 gems of several enchanting aspects of life itself. Forging Ahead is a fascinating canvas that lingers long in the visual mind. Waiting, Surveyor, Urge and Silent Love are other paintings that surprises and pleases. Golden Rays is a soothing, early morning vision of the Sun’s golden rays on natures bounties. Green-thumbed Agarwal splashes green paint lavishly lending visual grandeur to country side landscapes. This exhibition is pleasing to the senses and provides a pastoral relief to the hectic Capital life in Delhi.

Rajendra Agarwal’s first and foremost love is nature and a large number of his paintings are landscapes. He is fascinated by combinations of land, water and sky and transfers their tranquillity to the canvas very well. He is fond of travelling and searches tor subjects on his jaunts. A trip to Saurashtra has yielded a number of seascapes in which he has succeeded to a large extent in capturing the beauty and majesty of the sea.

Besides landscapes, Agarwal has painted a number of female forms for the exhibition he held recently. Moved by the often miserable plight of women and their nurturing role in sustaining society, he tries to express these feeling in his paintings. Agarwal moved from oil to water colours which he finds more challenging.