The Quest for Cruzo - Exhibition Walkthrough in Konkani with Vijay Bhandare – 15th July, 5.30 pm

Sunaparanta is pleased to announce a special walkthrough of the exhibition ‘The Quest for Cruzo’ – A Homage to the Art of Antonio Piedade da Cruz, curated by Ranjit Hoskote.  The exhibition walkthrough in Konkani will be conducted by artist, Vijay Bhandare

Friday, 15^th July 2016 at 5.30 pm

Artist Vijay Bhandare will take the viewers through the 3 sancta, each devoted to the portraiture of the self, the revolutionary evocation of Christ as redeemer of the oppressed, and the celebration of Mahatma Gandhi’s life and mission.

The Quest for Cruzo is dedicated to the work of a distinguished artist of Goan origin, trained in Bombay and Berlin, who enjoyed considerable reputation I Bombay between the 1930s and the 1980s, but whose contribution ha unjustly suffered eclipse for several decades.

Antonio Piedade da Cruz (1895-1982), also known professionally as Cruzo, was born in Velim, Goa, and educated at the Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy School of Art, Bombay, and the Akademie der Künste, now the Universität der Künste, Berlin. Returning to India, he set up a studio practice in Bombay as a painter and sculptor. Da Cruz led an extraordinary double life.

To the world, he was a salon artist whose patrons included aristocrats, mercantile grandees and colonial dignitaries such as Lord and Lady Mountbatten. However, his inner circle knew that his sympathies lay with the wretched of the earth: his ideological convictions were firmly with the anti-colonial struggle. 

 Da Cruz evolved a compelling expressionist idiom to articulate his sense of an artistic calling linked to the fate of his fellow Indians, and his revolutionary commitment to their freedom and redemption from poverty. The focal figures in his art were Christ, Gandhi, and by allusion, the Buddha. Through an art of empathetic allegory, da Cruz articulated the condition of India’s people, held hostage by exploitation, famine, and the apartheid of the caste system.

 

The exhibition will remain open till 20th July '16 for public viewing

Mondays to Saturdays: 11 am to 7 pm (except Wednesdays)

On Wednesdays & Sundays: 11 am to 5 pm