Narayan Sridhar Bendre

The following write up about Sri N S Bendre was written by late Sri P R Ramachandra Rao.
Sri Rao was a versatile genius.
He was known as a art critic.
He was many more things in one.
He worked as a journalist in England and it is to him that the idea of supplements in news papers should go.
He brought out education supplements in Times of India long ago.

I draw your attention to the style of his English and expression.
His English used to be extraordinary!

His knowledge about painting, architecture and such was another asset.
I was lucky to be associated with him in many of his projects.

Read about Bendre and between lines, see Sri Rao!

N S Bendre

Narayan Sridhar Bendre has journeyed to the goal of abstract painting, in his quest for the significance of reality, after running through the gamut of acdemicism, impressionism, cubism and oriental influences, of the Indian miniatures especially. In his supreme concern for architectonic space, he explores colors for their explosive possibilities; unpremeditated build up a coherence of innate form; in the very inlaying of those strokes, of yellow, orange, blue and deep brown, is created movement, in a rhythm of protecting and receding spaces. This orchestration of colour he admittedly owes to French master, Emile Bonnard; the forms are contained by the colours themselves, in an elimination of blinding line, indeed there is an explosive quality about Bendre’s later paintings, as if the colours have burst their banks in a splash of violent movement. From his earlier precise organization of solidly constructed forms, it is a far cry to his abstract improvisations, not excluding action painting. But this is a measure of his self-renewing faculty in a restless pursuit of his aesthetic grail.

The amazing versatility of Bendre inspired a band of painting hopefuls at Baroda University where he headed with distinction the Faculty of Fine Arts; here, in a spurt of uninhibited freedom, blossomed talents of creative import among them notably, Jyothi Bhatt, Shanti Dave, G R Santosh, and Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh.

A painter of striking versatility, Bendre has passionately experimented in many styles and techniques, refusing to be standardised. He was influenced in turn by the filtered Academicism of Bomaby school, the indigenous tradition of Mughal and Rajput painting, the revivalist Bengal movement and the Post-Impressionism of Cezanne and Gaugin. His varied output is solidly entrenched in the soil of India, in his immediate environment, his pictures are vivid testaments of a very personal integral vision. He retained, through his life’s vicissitudes, a perennial wonderment and discovsry, intensely responsive to the warmth and colour of and humanity of life.

This write up is the last of the pages in one of Sri Rao's unpublished book.