K. T. Shivprasad

Shivaprasad was born in the village of Mercara, Karnataka in 1947 in the midst of a poor farming community. Since a child he aspired to be a painter, but this was not a highly thought of profession, and as per his family’s wishes, Shivaprasad went to engineering college after he finished his school course. But so strong were his inclinations to paint, that Shivaprasad left his engineering studies and joined the Sir JJ School of Art in Mumbai,...
Read More Shivaprasad was born in the village of Mercara, Karnataka in 1947 in the midst of a poor farming community. Since a child he aspired to be a painter, but this was not a highly thought of profession, and as per his family’s wishes, Shivaprasad went to engineering college after he finished his school course. But so strong were his inclinations to paint, that Shivaprasad left his engineering studies and joined the Sir JJ School of Art in Mumbai, from which he obtained a diploma in painting in 1973.

Since his graduation, the artist has lived in the town of Hassan, not far from his own village in Karnataka, and apart from painting has been for a long time extremely active in the movement to strengthen Karnataka's poor agricultural workers through socialist, farmers' and dalit (untouchables') organizations.

Initially influenced by the European style of Abstract Expressionism, Shivaprasad today explores in his art the relationships between reality and illusion inspired by American artist like Andy Warhol and the twentieth century Pop Art movement. Unfortunately when he started exploring this new idiom, it left him very frustrated as no one he knew and interacted with could relate to his works. He used to destroy these Pop Art works in his frustration and turned away from this calling for a while to try and find a niche for himself in the conventional and accepted circles of art that he occupied. In the late 1970s Shivaprasad painted a series of male nudes, and later he moved on to painting portraits of the villagers and towns people of Karnataka in their most natural environments. But he couldn’t abandon his connection with contemporary, non-academic art forms. Soon these portraits became more and more abstract rather than figurative, and by blending together photographic realism, elements of contemporary abstraction, traditional village art and rural motifs, Shivaprasad finally settled in an iconography and visual vocabulary that he was fully comfortable with.

Having been compared to the great British modernist Lucien Freud, KT Shivaprasad's work is certainly worthy of the national and international acclaim it has won. His canvases reflect both the great pleasure he has finally found in his painting as well as a deep connection with his subjects, as each portrait revels the complexities and subtleties of their characters and emotions. Light, rapid brushwork and rough lines have been transformed into watchfully completed faces that display a great confidence and personal surety.

Today, KT Shivaprasad, in addition to painting, also is an avid photographer and architectural consultant, thanks to his brief stint at civil engineering.
The artist has had many solo exhibitions since 1976 in Bangalore, Mysore Mumbai and New Delhi, important ones being at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai in 1987, 1982 and 1992, at the Sakshi Gallery in Chennai and Bangalore in 1991 and 1992, and at Art Today in New Delhi, 1996. He has also taken part in prestigious collectives like the Bhopal Biennale in 1988, the Bombay Art Society Centenary Invitees show in 1989, the Gallery, Hong Kong in 1996, and Contemporary Indian Painters at the Jehangir Art Gallery, in 1996 as well. In 2001 Shivaprasad was conferred the prestigious Karnataka Rajyotsava Award by the state government, adding to cap, already overflowing with feathers.

KT Shivaprasad lives and works in Hassan, Karnataka.

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K. T. Shivprasad