Untitled (Houses in the Forest)

Avinash Chandra

Avinash Chandra (1931–1991) was a graduate and, for a short while, teacher at the Delhi Polytechnic which eventually became College of Art, Delhi. He employed his training in western academic art towards painting newly decolonized landscapes, such as the Shimla of his youth where he was born. Eventually he would move with his artist wife Prem Lata to London (with a brief stint in New York), winning accolades and appreciation from those who saw in his style a successful marriage of Indian aesthetics and a western sensibility. Absorbing the atmosphere of the swinging sixties into his stylistic evolution, Chandra is now perhaps best remembered for his erotically charged, expressive and colourful line drawings which he made increasingly from the 1970s. This early work depicts a stage in that evolution.