Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi, India

The first Prime Minister of independent India, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru conceived and established a few major agencies of culture. The Lalit Kala Akademi is one of these agencies responsible for the development, preservation, promotion and dissemination of visual arts in the country. There is one National body known as Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi and various State and Union Territory academies representing different states and Union Territories of India.

Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi represents the Union Territory of Chandigarh, capital of the states of Punjab and Haryana and focuses its activities in the field of visual arts such as Paintings, Drawing, Sculptures, Graphics, Photography, Ceramics, Installation Art and other arts allied to the field of fine arts. The Akademi is an autonomous organisation with its own constitution fully funded by the department of culture, Chandigarh Administration.

Featured Artist

Nek Chand

The untutored genius who built a paradise.

Nek Chand Saini is an Indian self-taught artist, famous for building the Rock Garden of Chandigarh, a forty-acre sculpture garden in the city of Chandigarh, India. His family moved to Chandigarh in 1947 during the Partition. At the time, the city was being redesigned as a modern utopia by the Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. It was to be the first planned city in India, and Nek Chand found work there as a roads inspector for the Public Works Department in 1951.

One day 36 years ago, Nek Chand, a humble transport official in the north Indian city of Chandigarh, began to clear a little patch of jungle to make himself a small garden area. He set stones around the little clearing and before long had sculpted a few figures recycled from materials he found at hand. Gradually Nek Chand's creation developed and grew; before long it covered several acres and comprised of hundreds of sculptures set in a series of interlinking courtyards.

For more about Nek Chand click here

Sohan Qadri Remembered

March 16th, 2011

Condolence meeting to pay homage to Sohan Qadri

Chandigarh Kalit Kala Akademi held a condolence meeting this afternoon at its conference Hall, to remember and pay tributes to the late renowned artist Sohan Qadri. During this get together of artists, art lovers and art critics a slide show along with some documentary films, covering some major aspects of Sohan Qadri’s life and art works were shown.

Some of the renowned artists who spoke about him included Shiv Singh, UK based sculptor Avtarjeet Dhanjal, Malkit Singh, Jodh Singh and Diwan Manna- artist and Chairman Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi. Condolence messages were sent by those who could not come as they were out of town including Professor B. N Goswamy, Professor S. P. Gautam- Vice Chancellor of Bareili University, Sh. Amarjit Chandan- UK based renowned Punjabi poet and close friend of Qadri with whom he wrote a book titled Hun-Kin, Art Crttic Sunit Chopra , Virendra Kumar Jain of Kumar Art Gallery in Delhi, Tagore Siddharth of Art Konsult in Delhi, film maker Harjit, writer Ravinder Ravi from Canada, his relative Tejinder Singh Lascham and Professor Prem Singh.

Most of the speakers lauded the role played by Qadri as a catalyst during the early saixties to change the mindset of artists from the northeren region especially Punjab and Haryana in shifting their focus from the realistic to the expressionistic, post expressionistic and abstract representation in their art works. They stressed upon the point that he liberated the Punjabi artist to think freely devoid of any baggage of the past traditions and styles.

Sohan Qadri was a regular visitor to Chandigarh and Delhi. His work attracted a lot of attention during the recently held India Art Summit in Delhi. He was actively painting even during his illness when he had to undergo dialysis every night. His art works are in many important collections in India and abroad.

In India his works are represented by many established art galleries including Kumar Art Gallery, Artkonsult of Tagore Sundaram and Chemould Art gallery Mumbai.

Sohan Qadri was born in the Punjab, in the village of Chachoki near Jalandhar. At the young age he was initiated into yogic practice first by Bikham Giri, and few years later he became close to a Sufi figure, Ahmed Ali Shah Qadri, whose last name he adopted. From them he imbibed an ecumenical and a deep spiritual yearning. He Studied from Chandigarh College of Art when it was operational in Shimla before being shifted to Chandigarh.

A painter, poet and Tantric yogi, Sohan Qadri was deeply engaged with spirituality. Qadri rhythmically serrated and punctured the surface of paper as part of his meditation practice. Relying on a language of orifices and elongated paths or lines, he abandoned representation in search of transcendence. Serenely composed, his works are intended to arrest the viewer’s thinking process and invite him or her to enter a metaphysical realm. The artist started exploring spiritual themes in the 1950s. He traveled through East Africa, North America, and Europe. Throughout the course of his career Qadri interacted with an array of intellectual figures including the architect Le Corbusier, the surrealist painter René Margritte and nobel laureate Heinrich Böll.

Sohan Qadri with his painting liberates the word meditation from its fashionable taste and brings it back to its proper origin, uninfluenced by Western propaganda, misunderstandings and corruptions. - Heinrich Böll (Nobelprize lit. 1972, Köln).