Biography
Eminent artist, art teacher, designer, writer and philosopher of art, Kalpathi Ganpathi “KG” Subramanyan,
also called Manida, is a major presence on the Indian art scene. Born in 1924 into a Tamil Brahmin family at
Kuthuparambu in north Kerala. His father, Ganapati Iyer was a surveyor in the revenue department and like
many others of his community he was a connoisseur of Carnatic music. He took young Subramanyan to
concerts, and at one point he even hoped that his son would become a musician. His mother, Alamellu, was
also fond of the performing arts and would often be accompanied by Subramanyan to the performances of
harikatha singers and the plays of itinerant theatre groups. As a child, Subramanyan was irresistibly drawn to
art objects and events without knowing them to be such. “I saw the painting and sculpture in the temples,
temple chariots or houses with great relish; I marveled at the spectacular rigs of ritual dancers, and the
painting and paraphernalia of ritual worship.” Some of them like the painted reliefs of the local temple were a
part of his everyday environment. These inspired him to try his hand at painting, make small laterite carvings
and indulge in other artistic activities, without harbouring any ambition of becoming professional artist. But
they did make a deep impression on him.
Subramanyan has grown to be an artist whose perspectives on art and life carry resonances of an early
engagement with the nationalist movement in which Gandhi and Rabindranath loomed large. As an artistteacher
closely associated with the art colleges at Baroda and Santiniketan and as a designer-consultant
associated for long years with the Handloom Board and the World Crafts Council, he has had shipping
influence on art and design practice in India. With his myriad interests and varied oeuvre, he is an artist who
carries forward the encyclopedic vision and legacy of his mentors into the present. Subramanyan’s versatility
comes partly from the diverse materials he works with as a painter, muralist, printmaker, relief-sculptor, and
designer, and partly from the flexibility and layered richness of his visual language. The latter allows him to
move from one level of communication or expression to another with great ease and without compromising
on his individuality. The ease with which he does this - be it an illustrated book or a mural that wraps a whole
building - is truly phenomenal. Progressively coming under the influence of his brothers who had literary and
cultural interest, one of them a school teacher, Subramanyan began to take advantage of the town’s public
library and became a voracious, precocious reader. He familiarized himself with Malayalam and English
poetry and made acquaintance with the larger world of professional art. However, art was still not his main
interest. In 1942, a time when the Quit India movement reupted, Subramanyan became a leading student
activist and led protests which got him arrested and sent to jail for six months in 1943. To save him from this
fresh detention, his brother who was a police officer and lived in Mangalore took him under his wings and
wrote a letter to Nandalal Bose, having noticed Subramanyan’s continued interest in art. He wanted to find
out if Bose would be willing to take Subramanyan on as a student and in 1944 received a response welcoming
him. Though he had been deeply involved with political activism, he reached a point in his life where he
realized that politics was not cut out for him, Subramanyan then heeded to Nandalal’s call and went to
Santiniketan to study art at Kala Bhavan.
Subramanyan defies bracketing and stands a little apart on the Indian art scene. Drawn to the nationalist
movement early in life he developed an ideological perspective on culture even before he went to art school.
Educated at Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, one of the nerve centers of pre-independence cultural resurgence
under artists who were exercised about the larger questions of cultural practices, he was geared to take a
broader view of life and art. This separated him from his contemporaries in post-independent India who
were largely guided by a passionate commitment to European modernist styles and modernist individualism.
Working in intellectual isolation it took him time to shape his ideas and give them visual articulation. But
once he spread his wings, his stature grew and it has, as it seldom does in art, kept growing with age.
Subramanyan did further studies at Slade School of Art, London. He continued painting and teaching over
the next few decades, and was appointed a fellow of the National Lalit Kala Akademi in 1985, and a
Christensen Fellow at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, in 1987-88. Subramanyan also served as Dean at the
Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University, Baroda, and in 1989 was appointed Professor Emeritus at
Santiniketan. He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions, and participated in several major Biennales
and Triennales. In 1966 Subramanyan was awarded the John D. Rockfeller III Fund Fellowship. In
recognition of his varied contributions to the development of Indian art he was awarded the Shiromani Kala
Puraskar by the Government of India in 1994. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held in 2003 at the
National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi and Mumbai. Subramanyan was awarded the Padma Bhushan
and the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India in 2006 and 2012 respectively. At the age of 92, he
passed away in Vadodara in June 2016.
Text Reference:
Excerpt from K.G. Subramanyan “The Painted Platters”. R. Siva Kumar, jacket overleaf text
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Excerpt from the book K.G. Subramanyan “A Retrospective” by R. Siva Kumar published by the National
Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi in 2003
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