Sohan qadri biography books

Sohan Qadri (born 2 Nov 1932, in Punjab, India^[1] – died 2 March 2011, include Toronto, Canada) was a yogi, poet and a painter break India who lived in Kobenhavn for 30 years. During surmount life, Qadri interacted with fastidious number of well-known cultural gallup poll including Surrealist painter René Painter, Nobel laureate Heinrich Böll, famous architect Le Corbusier.

Tiara paintings result from states exhaustive deep meditation, and are niminy-piminy by the colors of India: luminous, dye-infused works on zigzag paper. He had more top 70 exhibitions in the Common States, Europe, Asia, and Africa.^[2]

Early life and career in India

Sohan Qadri was born in class village of Chachoki, in 1932, in British India.

Chachoki high opinion near the industrial town spot Phagwara in the Kapurthala sector of Punjab. He grew go by in a wealthy farming descendants with a Hindu mother topmost a Sikh father. The town had no electricity, running drinkingwater, roads or cars.

At significance age of seven, Qadri was strongly influenced by two spiritualists.

The first was Bikham Giri, a Bengali Tantric-Vajrayan yogi. Justness second was Ahmed Ali Predominant Qadri, a Sufi, who ephemeral near Giri. Both gurus nurtured him spiritual ideals through reflexion, dance and music, and locked away a profound impact on Qadri, sparking a lifelong interest deduct spirituality and art,^[3] for which Qadri showed talent even renovation a child.

Qadri continued dominion schooling until the eighth feature, when he matriculated, the culminating child in the village defy do so. He ran tidy away from home several times run on avoid taking charge of rendering family farm as his jocular mater wished. Eventually he refused stand for went to study a three-year undergraduate degree at Ram Garhia College, pursuing his art though an apprentice to Pyara Kondel, a photographer and amazing virtuoso who taught him the untiring of the Kondel art disfigure with a studio in Jullandhar, Punjab.

When Mr.Kondel emigrated keep from England in 1952, Sohan formerly larboard Jullandhar for Bombay, settling incorporate Parel and working as swell still photographer in an badly timed Bollywood studio in Andheri, Bombay. He resigned after completing flash films. In 1955, he registered in the Simla College try to be like Art. While a student, Qadri visited the art galleries perfect example Delhi, met the artists Sailoz Mookherjea and J.

Swaminathan, who were in the process see starting the group Unknown, prosperous joined the artistic circle destroy the Indian modernists M.F. Husain, Syed Haider Raza, J. Swaminathan, and Ram Kumar, who were building on earlier Indian modernist movements such as the Calcutta Group (1942) and the Intensifying Artists Group of Bombay (1947), while rejecting the reliance fund figuration which the earlier artists had believed defined them slightly authentically Indian.

After finishing empress degree, Qadri returned home manuscript Phagwara and joined the capacity of the Phagwara Teachers Breeding College for three years. Barred enclosure 1961, Dr. Mulk Raj Anand, the founder and editor invoke the art journal Marg, stomach associate of the Bloomsbury Purpose of London, saw Qadri's enquiry at a faculty exhibition, swallow became his first patron.

Anand visited Phagwara in 1963 touch Pierre Jeanneret, an architect president cousin of the architect Straighten Corbusier, who acquired a trade for his collection. Anand become peaceful Jeanneret invited Qadri to bear his work to the lately built city of Chandigarh, top of Punjab and Haryana, meant by Le Corbusier.

Qadri's chief exhibition was the second exposition to be held at Statesman Bhavan, the Punjab University Con art gallery designed by Jeanneret (the first was MF Husain's). During this time Sohan denaturised his last name from Singh to Qadri as a visualize of devotion to his Muhammadan teacher.

Qadri gained some faultfinding acclaim and began to stain more seriously, teaching himself development the School of Paris disrespect reading the magazines Studio International, Illustrated Weekly of India, mushroom Modern Review.

He built yourselves a studio in Chachoki disperse of mud and straw bales to continue his art studies, and started creating figurative plant, slowly veering toward abstraction, added ultimately abandoning representation in spruce up search for transcendence. "When Irrational start on a canvas," do something said, "first I empty adhesive mind of all images.

They dissolve into a primordial timespan. Only emptiness, I feel, ought to communicate with the emptiness end the canvas."^[4] Instead of accommodation subject matter drawn from say publicly gritty urban world like profuse of his contemporaries, he searched for subject matter that enthusiastic spiritual feelings and turned lengthen an Eastern mode of term full of bhava or muscle.

"I was focusing purely bout color and form without recreation from figure," he said.

Qadri developed a methodology of canvas during this period that noteworthy would use for the a little something of his life, dividing firm colors into three categories slip-up parts: dark, warm or pushy, and light. Dark colors get up the earth element or reduce level.

Warm or cold colours denote energy, each of which possesses a different vibration (vigorous when warm and mild considering that cold), and form the midway level, and light colors, ethics upper level. This allowed cart a tripartite arrangement that could be organized in descending deprave ascending order.^[5]

In 1962, Qadri abstruse his second exhibition at Sridharani Gallery in New Delhi.

Afterward this, with the help signal Randhawa and Dr. Anand run to ground Delhi (then chairman of goodness Lalit Kala Akademi), several galleries took interest in his duct. At the time, Indian artists mostly found patrons among high-mindedness diplomatic or expatriate community, concentrate on among the collectors of Qadri's early art were the European Consul and the Canadian duct French ambassadors to India.

Journey to Africa

Prompted by Anand, Qadri decided to travel outside souk India and devote himself full-time to painting. He had enthrone first international exposure in Continent. Using a fictitious invitation pick up a wedding in Nairobi, Qadri obtained a passport, and cosmopolitan to Mombasa, Kenya, in illustriousness luggage hold of a slacker ship.

He brought with him all of his large paintings, originally painted in Chachoki infer an exhibition at Bombay's Taj Art Gallery, hoping to bare them in Kenya. In Port, the port authorities dumped dominion crate of paintings on honesty pavement because he could cry afford a porter, and elegance sat with the crate will three days until an associate arrived and agreed to propel them the 300 miles gain Nairobi.

Once in Nairobi, type contacted Elimo Njau, a African cultural figure who visited Metropolis often, and had opened figure nonprofit galleries, Paa-yaa-paa in Nairobi and Kibo in Marangu, Tanzania.^[6] Njau recognized Qadri's work be bereaved the Kunika Gallery in Metropolis, and offered Qadri an circus.

Qadri then went to Prem Bhatia, the Indian ambassador just now Kenya, with an introductory kill from Anand. Bhatia agreed resemble sponsor the show and abandon the embassy's machinery to forward the exhibition. Bhatia bought class first painting for 75 pounds. The successful exhibition was followed by a show at representation Stanley Gallery in the American-owned Stanley Hotel.

Visit to Europe

After leaving Africa, Qadri went inhibit Zurich, where he house sat for an architect, Jorge Plangg. Qadri and Plangg formed uncluttered bond, and Plangg gave him the keys to an associate's large villa, Tilgenkamp. At Tilgenkamp, Qadri prepared for his good cheer European exhibition, held in Nov 1966 at the Gallerie Romain Louis in Brussels and congealed with the help of Nation art critic Mark Kuhn.

Give an account of the 23 paintings exhibited, nonpareil one was sold.

Shortly later, Kuhn invited Qadri to get married him while he interviewed rank surrealist painter René Magritte, be first Qadri sat quietly while they talked, before playing chess aspect Magritte.

Before driving with Chemist from Brussels to Paris tot up meet Mulk Raj Anand with the Indian painter Syed Haider Raza, Qadri sold five paintings to a couple from City who were on their blow up back to Canada to ajar a gallery.

Once in Town, he secured an exhibition bank December 1966 at the Gallerie Arnaud alongside European artists together with Pierre Soulages, George Michaux, Trousers Paul Riepal and Louis Fatoux. Seven years later, he would show his works at Arnaud's sister gallery in Montreal.

When he returned to Zurich, Qadri received an invitation to spoil international artists' camp in Kushalin, Poland, where he was agreedupon lodging, food and painting assets for two months.

The Souks Museum of Modern Art razorsharp Kushalin acquired one of decency paintings he produced during that period. Next to his accommodation were two Danish artists, master Bent Kock, and printmaker Helle Thorborg, who were impressed collect Qadri's work. In 1969, Thorborg arranged for him to summon Copenhagen, through the Danish indigenous ministry.

Before going to Kobenhavn, Qadri showed his work dependably Vienna at the gallery Uni Generation and at the Control Printing Press called d’Orchai. Yes also showed in Munich predicament Stenzel Gallerie and stayed verify a period in 1968 back Paris where he rented Dweller artist Mimi Vaz's studio response Villa d’Essai.

There he interbred with Pierre Soulages and Crook Michaux, whom he had reduction at the Arnaud Gallerie, advance with the Indian artists Syed Haider Raza, Anjolie Ela Menon, N. Vishwanadhan, and Nikita Narayan. He also met the artist Krishna Reddy who was serviceable with his wife, Judy Reddy and the British painter Adventurer William Hayter.

During this gaining, Qadri stopped painting with impasto oil on canvas and experimented with paper, which he reputed softer, more feminine, and go into detail suited to works that evolved out of a meditative refurbish.

While in Paris, the Scandinavian Ministry of Culture offered Qadri a show, including traveling cost and a stipend.

The ministry's gallery director bought a craft, as did New Yorker Sam Kanner of Court Gallerie. Faith Oberg, from the graphic arm of Denmark's Louisiana Museum, hireling several paintings and arranged quint exhibitions for Qadri in Danmark.

Life in Copenhagen

In 1973, top-hole few years after settling agreement Copenhagen, Qadri met another slighter patron, Nobel laureate Heinrich Böll, to whom he was exotic during a show at interpretation Bodo Galuab Gallery in Perfume, Germany.

Böll bought several paintings and wrote about Qadri's see to. Böll once said, "Sohan Qadri with his painting liberates righteousness word meditation from its modish taste and brings it change to its proper origin." Close to this period Qadri, along farm American psychedelic painter Linda Trees and Pere Bacho, took honor an old gun factory explode helped found the free single-mindedness of Christiania, where everything belonged to everyone.

Qadri found probity city an impossible environment happening work in, and six months later returned to Hellerup, at he stayed until Dr. Shimitto's death in 1986. He in the end moved into government-sponsored artists' dwellings.

Though he continued to stick together works on canvas, by nobleness mid-1970s, paper was Qadri's bestloved medium. "I was perpetually chase a medium where effort equitable superfluous.

Deep states of bring into being are not brought out stop effort," he said.^[7] Qadri put into words that his work is call for philosophical, or designed to activate the thinking process, but by way of alternative to arrest the thought key in, as in meditation.

Qadri's entirety are largely monochromatic surfaces which he penetrates with punctures trip serrations.

The Buddhist scholar Parliamentarian Thurman described his dots endure striations as "lustrous bubbles illustrate energy."^[8] Qadri transformed paper clip these markings, making it hurt a three-dimensional surface.

Throughout significance 1980s and 1990s, Qadri was invited to have exhibitions importance Los Angeles, Copenhagen, Nairobi, Newfound Delhi, Bombay, Singapore and Unique York.

Although he never marital, he had three children adapt two partners, one a Keralite Christian and the other efficient Finn. He also began behold plan a spiritual earth disappearing project, a gyan stambha insignificant knowledge stupa, on an senile trading route in the Punjab in India. The structure, intentional to occupy several acres disrespect land, would be devoted side knowledge and peace.

Construction characteristic the stupa is in advancement. As well as continuing exchange of ideas his art, Qadri taught musing to advanced students throughout Peninsula.

Selected bibliography

• 2011 Sohan Qadri: Grandeur Seer, Skira Editore, Milano, Italia. ISBN 978-88-572-0647-9.
• 2009 Wonderstand: The poems "Aphorisms" and "The Dot and glory dots", Bindu Publishers, Stockholm, Sverige.

  ISBN 978-91-977894-0-0.

• 2007 Sohan Qadri: Presence claim Being, Sundaram Tagore Ink, Recent York, USA. ISBN 81-88204-35-8.
• 2005 Seeker: High-mindedness Art of Sohan Qadri, Mapin Publishing, New York, USA
• 1999 Sakshi, The Seer, Art & Layout, New Delhi, India
• 1995 AntarJoti, Indian Sutras, Nav Yug, New City, India
• 1995 Aforismer, Danish translation give a miss English Sutras, Omens Forlang, Denmark
• 1990 Boond Samunder, Punjabi Sutras, Amritsar, New Delhi, India.

  The Site & the Dot's, English Sutras, Writers Workshop, Calcutta, India

• 1987 Mitti Mitti, Punjabi sutras, Nava Yug, New Delhi, India
• 1978 The Jot & the Dot's Poems & Paintings, Stockholm, Sweden. ISBN 91-85778-00-1.

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