The Poetics of Colour: Navtar Bhavsar, A Painter’s Journey

Director: Sundaram Tagore

April 4, 2011 | 6.30 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts

The 60-minute documentary The Poetics of Color: Natvar Bhavsar chronicles the life and York of the noted Indian painter. The film follows Bhavsar as he journeys to New York City, the very nerve centre of the art world, in the 1960s. An immigrant in a new city, Bhavsar settles into a loft in SoHo, falls in love and comes of age as an artist. Viewers glimpse Bhavsar’s meditative studio where the artist works like a Tibetan mandala painter, showering clouds of dry pigment on massive canvases on the floor. Then, within minutes, viewers are thrust into the chaos of the streets of India and dynamic scenes of New York City. Written and directed by Sundaram Tagore, the film explores the multicultural nature of Bhavsar’s work and how that has affected the trajectory of his career.

Sundaram Tagore is a New York-based art historian and gallerist with galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong who promotes East-West dialogue through his contributions to numerous exhibitions as well as his eponymous galleries and their multicultural and multidisciplinary events. He has worked with numerous arts organizations, including The Peggy Guggenheim Foundation, Venice, Italy, and the Metropolitan Museum, New York. He has also served as an advisor for the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the United Nations.