Natvar Bhavsar: Free Yourself Exhibit

Natvar Bhavsar: Free Yourself surveys fifty years of the artist’s expressive abstractions, inviting viewers to meditate on the power of pure color. Simultaneously presented at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and the University at Buffalo Art Galleries, the exhibitions respectively feature works on paper and monumental paintings spanning each decade of his career. This exhibition also celebrates the debut of the AKG’s two acquisitions by the artist RITI-YAA (1969) and KE-RAA (1971). 

Bhavsar’s unique physical process centers on tiny particles of pure, dry pigment. He begins by soaking the entire canvas in a clear acrylic binder, then sifts or brushes pigment through handmade tools and fine mesh screens, building up to eighty sealed layers. Air currents, breath, and the rhythm of his body as he maneuvers around the surface help shape the final image a carefully controlled dance that produces textured, smoky surfaces with subtle shifts in color and tone.

Natvar Bhavsar: Free Yourself is organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and the University at Buffalo Art Galleries. Its presentation in Buffalo is organized by Katie O’Hara, Assistant Curator, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and its presentation at the University at Buffalo Art Galleries is organized by Robert Scalise, Director, University at Buffalo Art Galleries.

About the artist:

Natvar Bhavsar was born and educated in Gujarat, India, where color was ubiquitous. As a child, his palms and soles were painted with Kumkum, a vermillion powder used to ward off evil.  As Bhavsar explains, “art requires a sense of color. Just like music is about sound & its presence or absence & so art is about color. I wanted to show the world the color of the red bindi, the particular vermillion, that color, and how to paint it on canvas, how to look at it and understand it.”

Born into a family of textile printers, he grew up surrounded by vats of vivid pigment and colorful fabrics laid to dry across several acres. A childhood memory of dust dancing in shafts of sunlight became a touchstone of his career. The titles of his works often stem from Sanskrit words for natural phenomena or Hindu cosmology, underscoring the sacred and cosmological dimensions at play.

Bhavsar relocated to the United States in June 1962, receiving his schooling in Philadelphia. One of his teachers, Piero Dorazio, introduced him to the leading figures at the height of Abstract Expressionism. These artists encouraged the young artist to explore radical possibilities within abstraction. Bhavsar settled in SoHo, New York, where he still resides today.