Prabhakar Kolte

Born in 1946 in Maharashtra and studied painting at the Sir J.J. School of Art, where he later taught between 1972 and ‘94. Exhibitions abroad include ‘Six Indian Painters’ curated by Geeta Kapur in 1985, ‘Three Artists’ in Hong Kong in 1995, and in 1996 at The Foundation for Indian Artists in Amsterdam. His standing as a teacher is considerable, and he continues to live and work in Bombay. Kolte demonstrates a rare commitment to the abstract/modernist idiom in the face of current trends and fashions. For twenty-two years teacher at the Sir J.J. School of Art, which is in fact associated with abstraction, he cites Samant, Gaitonde and Ambadas as mentors and looks to Marathi literature, particularly the more contemporary poets and writers like Balachandra Nemade for conceptual guidance. Kolte’s early work owed much to Paul Klee, in terms of motif and also in thinking -‘Nature is not what you see, but what you don’t see; what you see is only the aftermath, for nature has already moved on hence the forms of nature.