image is 21 X 21 inches; frame: 30 X 30 inches
Born in 1955, Hyderabad, India, painter and writer Sangeeta Reddy migrated to the United States in 1978 and continued her studies in art. Currently she maintains a studio on Santa Fe Dr. in Denver, Colorado and Hyderabad, India, dividing her time between the two. She has been represented by various galleries in Aspen, Denver, New York, New Delhi, Chennai and now, Hyderabad since the beginning of her 26 year career.
Sangeeta has lived and breathed the arts from a very young age – her maternal grandmother was a contemporary of the classical vocalist Kesarbai Kerkar, her grandfather a connoisseur of the arts. Steeped in music, her mother was one of the first disciples of the late Pandit Ravi Shankar. Her late father was a pictorial photographer who co-founded the Hyderabad Photographic Society. Sangeeta chose to follow her own path into the visual and literary arts.
With seven years of undergraduate work in fine art in India and the US, and a bachelor’s from Bombay University in English literature and Philosophy, in 1985, Sangeeta’s work has developed into a highly individual style of mixed media abstract expressionistic paintings and monotypes on both canvas and paper. The deconstructed calligraphy and vibrant and nuanced color ever present in her work gives the work the flavor of India in concert with a western restraint.
Known primarily for her mixed media collages on paper and canvas, her abstract work was conceived from a challenge to visually parallel Sankara’s idea of Brahman in Advait philosophy and has now evolved into a formal language of deconstructed Devanagari calligraphy. Her artistic influences range widely from Indian weaving and textiles to Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne and Pablo Picasso (who were introduced to her at a very young age by her father’s interest in Western art), to her discovery (while studying in the US) of the Taos School of landscape painters as well as the Abstract expressionist painters, painters, in particular, Mark Rothko and Willem De Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Antoni Tapies and Richard Diebenkorn.
After having worked for 28 years in an abstract expressionist manner, her latest series of paintings are based on the rock formations of the Colorado Plateau. She was first Inspired By Abstract Expressionists like Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Ray Parker, her style evolved into abstract expressionism and color field painting, Since moving to the US she has become familiar with some of the artistic giants – Georgia O’keeffe, Maynard Dixon, Ernest Blumenschein, Victor Higgins and John Marin, much later of the Group of Seven and of Regionalism. The mountains and plains, canyons and stretches of sky, pinion, sage and cottonwoods. Mostly they were in the form of small plein air works in pastel, charcoal or water color, or drawings from memory or photographs that were more reductive and expressionistic. She has also worked in monotype techniques and in collage.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
Recent Shows:
2016 Fractured Landscapes of the West, BMOCA, Boulder, CO
2014 Erasing Borders 11th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art, Queens Museum, NYC
2014 LA Artcore, Los Angeles
2013 Shrishti Art Gallery, Hyderabad, India
2013 Erasing Borders 10th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art, 2012 Erasing Borders 9th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art, Art Crossings, Queens, the Bronx school for the Arts, New York and Art6, Richmond, Virginia.
2011 “IAAC Erasing Borders: 8th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art”, Queens Museum of Art, Queens, New York, Aicon Gallery, NYC, Charles B. Wang Center, Stony Brook and Jorgenson Center,
2011 The William Havu gallery, Denver, Colorado
2009 15th Street Gallery, Boulder
2009 Retrospective, Rocky Mountain Women...
Category
1980s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings
MaterialsPaint, Paper, Mixed Media
