A Ramachandran's selected artworks will now permanently beautify the institution where he taught for 27 years in the last century after Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) received their prints and displayed them on campus in the capital city.
The formal approval of 22 chosen works in print was followed by an 11-day tribute that ended on Thursday evening, March 14, reaffirming the painter-sculptor's creativity and recalling his long scholastic affiliation with the university.
Uma Nair, Art Curator and Critic, curated the exhibition of prints by the late artist, titled Guru-Shishya Parampara, IANS reports.
The show, which lasted from March 4 to 14, organised by JMI's Faculty of Arts, also included works by Ramachandran's students from 1965 to 1987 at the university.
Bindulika Sharma, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at JMI, described the collection of rare photos as "a great honour" for the university.
"These beautiful prints will keep his memory alive for us teachers and students," she noted, pointing out that some of the students of Ramachandran (1935-2024) are top contemporary artists.
Uma Nair, who has been following Ramachandran's work for over three decades, believes the artist's respect for tradition helped him emerge as an excellent professor and successful artist.
"Through countless hours of observation and sketching, Ramachandran went on to realise that nature held the keys to the beauty of what he translated onto canvas," she said.
The muses for the Kerala-born artist, who studied at Santiniketan in West Bengal before moving to Delhi in the mid-1960s, eventually turned out to be Rajasthanis, according to Uma Nair.
The Ramachandran works for JMI were donated by the city-based Vadehra Art Gallery, which has a three-decade history with the artist recognised for his large-scale paintings. Ramachandran, an art historian and muralist, was a virtuoso of pen-and-ink, watercolour, and oil painting, all of which were renowned for their sophistication and nuances. He died on February 10, at the age of 89.
