Sudhanshu Sutar

Sudhanshu Sutar is from the eastern Indian state of Orissa. In the words of eminent poet Kathleen Laine “The ‘real’ Orissa is what the imagination has created in her heritage of music, painting, architecture, poetry, all the crafts and arts together with her incomparable continuity in thought, and expression.” Whether it is Buddhism, sculpture (The Sun Temple at Konark) or Odissi dance, Orissa has an impressionable image in Indian psyche and its history.

Born in 1969 in Kalikapur village of Orissa, life was tough for the aspiring artist who graduated in Fine Arts from Utkal University (1993), Orissa. Sudhanshu started with a quest to travel across Orissa on his bicycle to explore more than what he visualized of life outside his village. Convinced that he was to pursue art as a career, he felt the need to shift base to Delhi in 1994.

Struggling to find gallery representation at the time, he made ends meet in the capital by painting large format billboards surrounding Delhi’s most expansive exhibition space at Pragati Maidan. He continued to do a variety of odd jobs and endured as an artist; finding some recognition through a gallery in Japan that helped him sustain a modest living in the capital for the last decade.

His new work is representational of his roots from Orissa and the time he spent in Delhi. A marvelous combination of his rural psychological imagery and his complex survival in the big city reveals some visually salient images.

The artist lives and works in Delhi.