Artist Biography & Facts

Reddeppa Naidu

"In my search for identity and roots --- an identity that is free of Western impact --- I have turned to mythology. I wanted to paint on subjects that belong to me and were a direct source of inspiration." 

Born in 1932 in the East Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, Redeppa Naidu attended the Madras College of Arts and Crafts and had the benefit of the best art education that the institution could offer in the mid-twentieth century.

Indian artists, in that era, were quite obsessed with Parisian modernism. But Naidu says that the great European experiment did not really influence his works. "I was not quite acquainted with impressionism, expressionism or cubism. If it was pointed out that my work was impressionistic, I could not comprehend how it could be so," he adds. "Such comparison, in a way, also upsets me."

The 50s, when Naidu began his career as an artist, was also the time of struggle for Indian artists to receive recognition from within the country. Patronage came mostly from foreign embassies that purchased their paintings and sponsored exhibitions. In several of his works, Naidu has painted with palette knife on canvas, using pastel shades. But mostly, he prefers the medium of oils on fine-grained canvas. Interestingly, somewhere in the 60s, Naidu claimed that his paintings, at some level, ran against his grain. "Perhaps the academic approach of the school I studied in, and the challenge of the search for my own self, made me seek images to match the sensations of urban world," he explains. He moved on from painting too much of naturalistic modeling to a linear and cubistic approach. He painted several architectural structures and settings, and assimilated amazing amount details in them.

For instance, Naidu painted a lot of churches, and his canvas depicted spires rising into the space above.  Somewhere in the 70s, Naidu also turned his back to Western impressionism style of art, and brought in a lot of Indian motifs and styles, like the miniature style, into his works. At this critical juncture, the artist whose works had always defied any convention or conformism to category and place went his own way. He sourced his images and inspiration from the world around him. He made a beginning with Indian icons, which he saw everywhere.

He drew a lot from Indian mythology and temples. From the roadside temples, for instance, he took the images of Durga sitting on lion. "This was the first painting I did in the series titled 'Deity'," says Naidu. "The second being the image of Lord Venkateshwara in Tirupati." Interestingly, it was one of Naidu's Muslim friends who pointed out the icon to him. "He told me that he had not seen a more interesting icon that," he recalls. His fascination with Indian icons continued for almost two decades. "I decided to go deeper into the subject," claims Naidu, "and after reading the epics and puranas, to which less religious forms are related, I made up my mind to paint more and more of these, while freeing myself from all their earlier contexts and achieving a purely aesthetic expression."

Besides Durga and Vekateshwara, he also extensively painted Ganesha, since he feels that "painting Ganesh is like praying." Every one of his Lord Ganesh images is different; it varies in form and color. Naidu believes that the elephant headed God as a form is inexhaustible and requires a lifetime involvement in various mediums and aspects.

According to his mentor K C S Pankiar, "Naidu's line play is a sensuous rhythm on the canvas, carrying with it a strange awareness of the lyrical form as wedded to space and picture plane. His colors, caught in the sieve of his lines, gleam and sparkle with dignity. Linear patterns characterize most of Naidu's works. He brought the art of figurative painting to a pinnacle. The lines of his drawings, light and uneven, done with a dry brush, are characteristic of his style. While his lines are free and fluid, the color tones in his works are soft and fresh.

The artist held his first exhibition in 1958 in Chennai. He passed away in 1999.