Natvar Bhavsar


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Where Magazine  Sundaram's Choice  December 2008

"The latest edition comes in the form of Sundaram Tagore [Gallery], a bright space filled with vibrant contemporary works personally selected by it's namesake, a notable New York-based curator and descendant of influential poet and Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore."

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News India Times  Show of New Paintings by Bhavsar Opened November 25  November 28, 2008

"Bhavsar's paintings are in the tradition of great art through the ages...The roller-coaster of the art market might induce us to lose sight of the varieties of art. 'RANG: Natvar Bhavsar' will restore the balance."

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South China Morning Post  City Reviews: In your Mind's Eye; Sundaram Tagore Gallery  October 28, 2008

"...Less-colour-saturated but no less intuitive are the pieces by Natvar Bhavsar, who sprinkles pigment delicately on his canvases in an echo of Jackson Pollock, although the works' understated quality reflects a gentle Asian sensibility that's the opposite of the American painter's frenetic, ego-driven style..."

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The Standard  Home Where Art and Heart are for Gallerist Tagore

"Tagore's Galleries in New York, Los Angeles and now Hong Kong combine visual arts with other forms such as poetry reading, dance performances, music, films and charity funding."

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ARTnews  $25 Billion and Counting  May 2008

"The Indian art market just took off about five years ago and has really heated up even further in the last two," says Sundaram Tagore, who has galleries in New York and Beverly Hills, as well as a Hong Kong branch slated to open this month. In addition to demand from the Indian diaspora and Indian collectors, Tagore says, part of the growth has been fueled by American corporations with expanding businesses in India and China.

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Kee  The Essence of Life  May 2008

"Tagore explains how his passion for art has enabled him to dissolve differences in cultures and bring them together in a unique and creative way, denoting that art can transcend all culture and social standings."

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Asian Art News  New Openings  May/June 2008

"Gallerist Sundaram Tagore said, "All these artists have spent their lives working in and exploring different Eastern and Western cultures - including India, China, Nepal, Japan, Italy, Holland and America. Together they create an incredible mosaic and foster an intercultural dialogue that reflects a diversity of thought and artistic style."

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Gulf News Friday  A Master's Stroke  April 17, 2008


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Art + Auction  Back East  March 2008

"Among the returning dealers is New York's Sundaram Tagore Gallery, which is bringing a selection of richly hued abstractions, priced between $25,000 and $250,000, by the likes of Natavar Bhavsar and Hiroshi Senju, who were born in Gujurat, India, and Tokyo, respectively."

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Forbes Asia  Artsourcing  January 8th, 2007

"...works by artists such as M.F. Husain and Raza are commanding a million dollars and higher."

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The Indian Express  Art of Adding Illusion to Art  July 13th, 2007

"Three Indian artists are among those featured in Inner Journey, the latest offering from the Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New York."

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Asian Art News  Inner Journey  July/August 2007

"...Senju expresses contemporary modernity through ancient painting techniques unique to Japan."

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Home News Tribune  Entering the Realm of Experience  May 21, 2007

"One does not merely look at a Bhavsar work, one is transported by it. It is as if the artist has bottled up the night sky, dusted it in poweder pigment and cast it out in great dreamlike bursts. The result is a textured canvas that pulses with dimension; grainy up close, smooth and wispy from afar."

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New York Times  The Details Are in the Beauty  May 6th, 2007

"Yet the absence of recognizable imagery in his work aligns Mr. Bhavsar more with American traditions of abstract art, and in particular color field painting; one is reminded variously of the work of the American painters Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Jules Olitski."

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Courier News c-n.com  Lyrical abstractions hold court at the Zimmerli  April 16, 2007

"Bhavsar's imagery conjures cosmic impressions, like nebulae expanding in a brilliant dance of colored light or stars mingling in a gravitational waltz through space."

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The Star Ledger  Layers of Brilliance  April 13, 2007

"The artist gets a remarkable range out of the method, producing big, star-studded Milky Ways on indigo backgrounds, swirling smile storms, pimply white surfaces that look like clotted cream, and floating lozenges of color, usually a square centered on a contrasting color, that remind you of Mark Rothko."

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Desi Talk  Rutgers 1st university in U.S. to hold solo show by South Asian artist  March 23, 2007

"...With the opening of a comprehensive show of 50 or more paintings spanning four decades of the work of Indian-born New York artist Natvar Bhavsar in the special gallery of its Jane Vorhees Zimmerli Museum, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, became the first university in the country to host such a solo show (March 11 - July 22) by an artist of South Asian Descent..."

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Desi Talk  A selective overview of 4 decades of Bhavsar's art opens at Rutgers  March 16, 2007

"...It is not that there are just layers and layers of pigments, some dispersed by the flow of air in Bhavsar's Greene Street loft studio - not just 80 layers as Kwint said, but as many as 200 - but there are meanings too deep for ordinary cognition, meanings too ancient and new, bizarre and supremely rational, for us even to try and put into words..."

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Khaleej Times  Dubia Needs to Identify the Right Thinkers of Culture  March 9th, 2007

"Dubai is at the crossroads of the east and west, and it is taking charge as one of the great centres of commerce, tourism, and art"

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Art News  Reviews: New York: Natvar Bhavsar Sundaram Tagore  September 2006

"...Bhavsar's paintings are not limited to their surface colors - which are indefinable, suffused as they are with additional tones such as violet, saffron, rose, vermillion, cinnamon, midnight blue, and emerald, tinged warm and cool. Thier surfaces can resemble smoke when the hues evanesce, or they can be more tangible, pebbled textures and raised patterns, edged in a flame motif..."

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Hong Kong Tatler  Off the Wall  September 2006

"Tagore is an art historian, curator and founder of the Sundaram Tagore Gallery based in Chelsea, which is the hottest, most happening place for contemporary art in New York."

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Asian Art News  Sundaram Tagore Gallery at the Hong Kong Exhibition Center  July/August 2006

"Sohan Qadri's single color works seem to ripple down the surface of the paper on which they are made. These are fine, thoughtful works by an artist who is acutely aware of simplicity and the power of a single color and the hues within it."

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Namaskaar  Indian Art blooms in New York  July 2006

"...The gallery, always interested in cross-cultural connections, has shown a diverse group of artists including Natvar Bhavsar, Sohan Qadri, Judith Murray, Nathan Slate Joseph, Anil Revri and Susan Weil..."

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News India Times/Desi Talk  Group Exhibition Reveals Confluence of East and West  Friday, June 30, 2006

"Bhavsar, Qadri, and Revri, are symbolic of the journeys of the artists of our times. Geographically, they have traveled out the country of their birth; artisically out of the influence of the Modernism of Matisse and Picasso, the Abstractionism of Mondrian, the Lyric Abstractionism of Pollock."

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Hi Blitz  High Art in a Taxi Garage  June 2006

"Fabulous art in a taxi garage? Sundaram Tagore a descendant of the illustrious Tagore family, himself an art historian, collector and connoisseur moved from his big gallery in Soho to an even bigger space - a 100-year-old garage in Chelsea."

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Asian Contemporary Art Week  Sundaram Tagore Gallery  May 25, 2006

"The goal . . . is to create a dialogue among cultures and to find points of commonality and elements that inspire new ways of thinking and creating...Curated by Sundaram Tagore"

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Asian Art News  East/West Dialogue  May/June 2006

"...Natvar Bhavsar is a color field painter who works in pure pigment. He is largely credited for bringing a spiritual element to the absrtact expressionism movement in America..."

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Rave Sq.  The Big Picture  May/June 2006

"...The two things that stand out about Bhavsar's works are the colors and the sizes, both bold and magnificent. While critics noticed similarities between the size of his works and those of Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothco and Barnett Newman, none of these art greats were able to capture the color he was exposed to in his youth in India..."

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Rave Sq.  Garage Turned Gallery  May/June 2006

"After spending years in Soho, Sundaram Tagore Gallery has finally made the move to Chelsea, one of the art capitals of the world."

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Indian Express  Sundaram Tagore Gallery Now Adds Color to Chelsea Art Scene  March 31, 2006

"Bhavsar works with dried granules of pigment in a very deliberate and precise approach, although it may appear random. What emerges are canvases that are deeply pictorial in nature. Some of his paintings are monumental--more than 30 feet in length--and lyrical, abstract attempts to reveal both the microcosmic and the macrocosmic universe."

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Asian Art News  Relocation Show  March/April 2006

"Sundaram Tagore Gallery has announced that they will relocate to a new space at 547 West 27th Street in Chelsea and inaugurate their new gallery with a show of Natvar Bhavsar to open on March 16, 2006."

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Art+Auction  At the Fair  March 2006

"But the first show of Indian contemporary art in the fair's history, from newcomer Sundaram Tagore of New York, also reflects heightened interest in that field Tagore has meditative paintings on paper by Sohan Qadri.."

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Toronto Star  Vivid Art that joins East and West  October 29th, 2005

"Natvar Bhavsar is a world-renowned painter from India whose huge colorful canvases hang in more than 1,000 private, corporate and museum collections including the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.."

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Rave Sq.  Erasing Borders  Nov-Dec 2004

"[Sundaram Tagore] A gallery owner and curator explains diaspora culture from an artistic perspective - and highlights the responsibilities of the émigré Indian artist today"

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The Brooklyn Rail  Artseen  February 2004

"What Bhavsar's paintings achieve is a remarkable intimacy that leads us into the present fusion of language, technology, and the transmission of form."

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Art in America  Mutability and Metaphor  December, 2003

"...Natvar Bhavsar creates large compositions in which a cosmic vision emerges from lush materiality."

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India New York  Book on Painter Natvar Bhavsar by Noted Historian Released in N.Y.  October 23, 1998

"A recognition of [Bhavsar's] place in the mainstream art world today was the release on Oct. 15 of a book on Bhavsar, written by a noted authority on American art, irving Sandler, and published by Craftsman House of Australia, at a reception at the home of noted art collectors Pat and Ben Heller, ...titled "Natvar Bhavsar: Painting and the Reality of Color," contain[ing] 42 plates of color that reproduce the complexities and nuances of the original, which ordinarily elude reproduction, with notable fidelity."

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India New York  2 shows in Europe and a Book from Down Under Feature the Art of Natvar Bhavsar  October 10, 1997

"[Bhavar's] work occupies a unique place in mainstream contemporary art. It is distinguished by what is described as its "materiality." It is not figurative. It doesn't tell a story, nor communicate any idea. It contains no drama; it doesn't prove any point, preaches no moral. It is just there, by itself, existing all alone."

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The Hindu  Fireworks in a Dark Sky  June 30, 1996

"He is a masterful draftsman and was trained in India in an academic tradition. But colour is his thing. Although he has done figurative work and also went through a cubist phase, there has been an increasing de-emphasis on drawing in his work and a corresponding emphasis on colour. If you have to classify him, his is an abstract expressionist but his work is unique. They always remind me of the state of mind just before you awaken from a dream."

-Howard Wooden-
Director of the Wichita Art Musuem in Texas

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