Education:

2015 Summer Residency program and education at the New York Academy of Art at Manhattan, New York City.
1997 M.A. Fine, Printmaking, Royal College of Art, London
1993 M.F.A. Printmaking, M.S. University of Baroda
1989 B.F.A., Painting, Govt. School of Art, Aurangabad

Scholarships:

1995-97 INLAKS Foundation’s scholarship for M.A. (Fine) at the RCA, London
1995-96 Po-Shing Woo Foundation’s scholarship, Hong Kong
1990 Ministry of HRD, Govt. of India’s scholarship for young talents in different cultural fields Fellowship
1989 Fellowship Government School of Art, Aurangabad

Show Curates by me:

2023 Mumbai art Expo,At The Bombay Presidency Radio club, Colaba, Mumbai
2022 ART OF INDIA. SPACE, ART EXPO 2022, At Hall of Knowledge, Discovery Of India Building, Ground Floor. Worli, Mumbai.
2019 India Art Times, "Sculpture Exhibition, 2019" Radio Club Seafront next to Gateway of India and Taj Hotel.
2021 Nehru Center Art Gallery, Mumbai.
2021 Jahangir Art Gallery, Mumbai
2019 Generation Art Foundation Presented, Affordable Art exhibition 2019 , Cymroza Art Gallery, 72 Bhulabhai Desai Road, Breach candy, Mumbai -400026
2019 Art Times, Paintings and sculptures exhibition, Cymroza Art Gallery, 72 Bhulabhai Desai Road, Breach candy, Mumbai – 400 026
2019 India Art Times, "Sculpture Exhibition, Radio Club Seafront next to Gateway of India and Taj Hotel.
2018 HUES, An Art Show, Presented by Generation Art Foundation, At Jahangir Art Gallery, Mumbai
2016 SOULFUL EXPRESSIONS, An Art Show, Presented by Generation Art Foundation,At Coomarswamy Hall, Museum, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai
2013 Art Times, Presented by Generation Art Foundation, At Coomarswamy Hall, Museum, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai
2013 VIBGYOR, An Art Show, Presented by Generation Art Foundation, At Coomarswamy Hall, Museum, Kala Ghoda Mumbai

Publications:

The Bombay Art Society Etihash AAni Vatchal Bhag -1 , 2017
The Art News Magazine of India, 2019
The Art News Magazine of India, 2018
I.P.C.L. Magazine
Govt. School of Arts, Aurangabad magazine
Motor Cycle News Magazine, London
Inside Outside
The Indian Design magazine, September 1998
The Art News Magazine of India, 1999
Mumbai Diary October-November 2006

Studio Residency:

2015 Summer Residency program at the New York Academy of art in New York City.
1996 Cite International des Arts. 18 rue de 1’ Hotel de Ville, 75180 Paris, Cedex 04, France.

Countries visited:
U.K., France, Spain, USA, Netherlands, Czechoslovak Republic, Kuala Lumpur.

Artists Statement:
My artwork is a gateway to meditation and concentration, embracing the richness of colors and images. Colors hold a potent sway over the mind, providing therapeutic experiences and transporting individuals to unique realms. My artistic aim is to reach the soul through visuals, promoting release and inner peace. Embodying the "Happy Vibration Theory," my paintings resonate with high-frequency emotions like joy, love, gratitude, and contentment, evoking positivity and uplifting the viewer's spirit.

The image will help you to meditate, concentrate and make you realize the depth of colors and strength of images. Color is capturing individual mind, relating to the conscious mind and takes you to different world, as well as it works as a color therapy to the mind. I am trying to touch the soul with the visual material. In short, I try to release the body, mind and soul through my brush. The work has high visual attraction which holds the mind and induce “P e a c e”.
I am a painter, sculptor and Printmaker, and occasionally I write poetry. I like working on monumental sculpture. I have proficiency in stone carving, metal casting and fiber molding works. I am able to use any media according to the demands of my work subject. I do printmaking, using various techniques. I have vastly used serigraph and etching.
The content and subject of my work are based on past experiences. I subconsciously filter these experiences and bring them out visually in an abstract figurative manner. The total image comes forth as intricate drawing which reflects my subconscious mind. The themes are based on love and fantasy although these are not literally depicted. Daily experiences from life influence my work. This is the essence of my work. While producing my work, I do not consciously set about making an image. I try to capture the essence of feeling or mood and depict it through various media. Sometimes I draw pictures of my inner world which in turns make me feel strange and mind boggling.
By an Art Critic:
Ghanshyam Gupta is a painter who has the rare honour of exhibiting his creations along with the some of the greatest artists of all times: Lucian Freud, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, Edward Munch, Henri Matisse, Rembrandt, and Albert Durer. This exhibition was London Original Print Fair held in 1997 at the Royal Academy of Art,
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London. He received the Nordsten Award for the Best Print of the year from the London Original Print Association and received the Art Museum Award Winner, from Tokyo International mini-print Triennial, Japan in 1998. Also to his credit is the most prestigious honour of receiving the Inlakes scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art, London. His works were included in Osians auctions. He is a sculptor, printmaker, and a painter.
His works are constantly in transformation. His latest series of painting are devoted to optical illusion on one hand and transcendental meanings on the other. Circles of colors revolve in centripetal and centrifugal permutations.
From Rashna Patel tagnline@gmail.com
Succumb to the world that’s beyond what is Shut your eyes, open the inner door of YOU, Imagine the celestial colors of sublime peace Outgrow the unwanted, go embrace the TRUE, Surrender then to the rhythm of your breath Know the inner self, your expectations are FEW, Happy is the heart that is light in its desire Your soul is now rejuvenated, feels ANEW, Gradually the curtains of conscious mind fall Liberate your life, a new hope is close in VIEW. Inspiring Joy, Inviting Calmness and Invoking Oneness.
Soulful paintings are not just pieces of art where the brush touches the landscape; they are a part of life where the surreal connects to the obvious. Ghanshyam Gupta’s paintings are all about Inspiring Joy, Inviting Calmness and Invoking Oneness
Exuding from his personal experiences, Ghanshyam’s work resonate the essence of treating all emotions at par. When feelings in their various manifestations ….pain or pleasure, happiness or hurt, love or longing….are accepted with the same grace, reverence & balance, we realize divine joy. Ghanshyam’s art reflects the quintessence of Inspiring Joy. Holistic, Happy, Harmonious…..Colour therapy pulsates in Ghanshyam’s paintings. When the seven spectrum of colours merge into the seven energy canters of the body, a rare sanctity takes control over the mind. Every painting absorbs this enigmatic, yet positively energizing power of colours, thus giving birth to images Inviting Calmness.
We are not what we are Trained, we are not what we are Taught, we are not what we are Termed….We are what we THINK! Ghanshyam’s abstract and figurative strokes stimulate the inner light, where shackles of earthly relationships are surpassed and one connects purely to oneself….thus Invoking Oneness.
Ghanshyam Gupta, is a highly respected, widely travelled and vastly experienced painter, sculptor and printmaker. His works are a reflection of the positive and strong influences of colours, structures and meditative powers in human lives. His proficiency includes stone carving, metal casting, fiber molding works and printmaking, using various techniques. All this, complemented with some outstanding display of serigraph and etching.
Not only is Ghanshyam Gupta an acclaimed artist nationally, but he has received several accolades across the world. To his merit he has lined up for himself some prestigious awards like……………..
Motivated by the magnanimous responses he has earned globally, Ghanshyam Gupta is all set to delve deeper into the realm of the fascinating inner world of the soul and rekindle every life with the light of Beauty, Bliss & Beyond…..
Ananta Singh – Curator
(From Patna, presently living in Bombay)
Ghanshyam Gupta’s works are a play on optical illusion meant to create such puzzling perceptions of his work that keeps us viewers engaged. His works conveying this feeling of tranquility, peace and calm, have a meditative quality to
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them. His works are colourful, utilizing vivid, pop colours like purples and pinks, that render them quite inviting by adding a kind of playfulness to his works.
Purposeful use of concentric circles of bright and varying colours further adds such a hypnotic value to his works, that makes us viewers seek some deeper meaning into those paintings. So, as one continues to look one notices patterns emerge in his paintings.
Like many of the optical illusion artists of the world — Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely, etc — Ghanshyam Gupta uses repetition of lines, curves and colours to produce such illusions in his art. Optical illusion art is an art field that has gained a lot of popularity in recent years, with museums and art galleries using it as a way to give an immersive experience to the audience with the op-art installations and/or paintings. Optical illusion engages people and intrigues viewers as it often forces a second look, exploiting the limitations of the way human eye processes colours, light, movement, depth and graphics. Op art is a visual language that many artist’s use to portray an abstract interpretation of their thoughts, feelings and surroundings.
His latest works are in trend especially with current times, where more often than not works are being presented online. Usage of optical illusion in his works enraptures a viewer online, as one needs to look at it time and again, pulling us in repeatedly as viewers.
Similar to Frank Stella’s when it comes to the use of geometric symmetry, patterns and repetition, Ghanshyam’s work is still vastly different as he uses his artworks to make people feel at home with them, open to varied interpretations. While Stella’s work, with the use of bright colours and raw and unfinished look, never meant his works to have any symbolic meaning to be interpreted.
Like many of his contemporaries, he is interested in the perception created by the visual and psychological resonance of colour, lines and forms. His works are subtle with the illusions, it exists, but only on a closer look. Through precise combinations of lines, colours, and curves he creates paintings, with depth, movement, and a serene calm feeling to it.
Bridget Riley and Ghanshyam Gupta both have a similar goal in mind with their op arts — the visual and emotional response to colour. Like Bridget who utilizes curves in her art, Ghanshyam too uses curvilinear motion in his art and they both through their work invoke the feeling of tranquility and peace. Although in contrast to Bridget Riley’s works mostly in black and white, Ghanshyam’s are rarely so.
Ghanshyam’s works are mesmerizing. These latest works using threadbare thin lines have concentric circles, intermingling with a plethora of squares and circles. So the more one looks at his works the more one is likely to question one’s own perceptions as possibly the trickery of the eye. While looking at Ghanshyam’s paintings we experience a sense of movement — the perception of these circles being in constant motion — as he employs colours, lines and the limitations of the human eye to his advantage.
In some of his works, their layered and in-depth intermix of varied colours and several circles, create a feeling akin to the works of the artists’ like Jin Sook Shinde and Carlos Cruz Diez, a sense of motion. Using lines and colours similar to Cruz Diez and like him, he hopes people have an experience with colour that entails a participatory and interactive experience in space and time. His use of fine lines and combinations of colours help him achieve that.
On the other hand artists’ like Richard Anuszkiewicz’s and Victor Vasarely’s works, create mind-bending paintings that are more jarring in your face experience, are saturated with vibrant colours that seem to pop out, pulsate off and change forms on the canvas. In contrast, Ghanshyam’s work though colourful and vibrant have a more calm and quiet feel to it, it is more subtle with the illusions.
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His works are colourful, having used a varied number of colours, some of them not necessarily my first choice but they still work together. In addition, while the central part of his latest works seems to be lines drawn in forms of circles and squares, there are still multitudinous ways in which he has used these graphics. Going through his work also allowed me as a viewer to interpret my own meanings of some of his work and come to my own conclusions.
Ghanshyam’s latest works are vibrant and intriguing. Seemingly they convey a feeling that there is serenity and order that comes after chaos. Herein he showcases some of his latest works that are based on his experiences.
Pigmentation and colour scale is as Indian as Abdoulaye Konate defines the Malian Sahel of Africa. Cruz Diez and Jesus Rafael Soto formed the school of Venezuelan Optical and Kinetic art similarly Ghanshyam Gupta comes from a time and places contextual to Indian art history were as one of the early Inlaks Foundation scholars to the Royal College of Arts, London, he was the early consequences of a new aesthetic aligned to globalisation or an internationalism based on global capital, trade and liberalisation. Gupta growing up in Aurangabad and originating from Uttar Pradesh represented an aspiration that was keen to shed the yoke of poverty and provincialism. He was ambitious: a print award in London gave him capital to buy land above the Ellora Hill to establish a Sculpture Park in 1997 but was scuttled by the unending chicanery of Indian bureaucracy creaking under norms of license raj. A residency at the Cites des Arts in Paris saw him walk the city imaging how he would visualise form and colour in his aesthetics. Since then he finds residencies across the world to find time for his practice which he began at MSU Baroda. Undeterred by his initial failed utopia he worked to be part of the first video art exhibition organised by Chemould Art Gallery and Indian Art Magazine along with Ranbir Kaleka and Akbar Padamsee. Since then he has been entrepreneurial using commissioned sculpture to finance his paintings. His paintings manifesting in as optical illusions in the eyes of the viewer, sculptural, possible and art.
A painter, sculptor and printmaker, Ghanshyam Gupta is an abstract artist whose works is in the genre of optical illusion. Often influenced by his earlier experiences he uses colours that are visually stimulating and abstract. In that sense, his works are a kind of colour therapy.
He has exhibited at the London Original Print Fair at the Royal Academy of Art, London, in 1997 along with some of the greatest artists of all times: Lucian Freud, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, Edward Munch, Henri Matisse, Rembrandt, and Albert Durer. He was also part of the of video-based installations curated by The Art News Magazine and Chemould Gallery at Max Muller Bhavan Kala Ghoda featuring works by Akbar Padamsee, Ranbir Kaleka among other artists. He has received the Nordsten Award for the Best Print of the year from the London Original Print Association and the Art Museum Award Winner from Tokyo International mini-print Triennial, Japan in 1998.
Ghanshyam Gupta graduated with a masters in printmaking from the Royal College of Art, London in 1997 where he was an Inlaks Scholar and has a bachelors in Fine Arts from MS University Baroda.
Ramprasad Akkisetti,
Curator of the India House Art Gallery MD of a Successful Design Firm.
Ghashyam Gupta is an acclaimed artist and a recipient of numerous accolades, who has remained natural in every sense, as nature would want him to be. His paintings fuse colors with concepts that are philosophical to us. Peace and happiness are such concepts that can be felt but can't be explained. In his recent paintings one can notice he is trying to leave the mundane and aspiring for the simple truths of life. In a way his paintings are therapeutic to the injured mind of our ever-chaotic urban life, that is seeking peace and happiness. His sculptors on the other hand are kinetic and transcendental. It is this dichotomy of stillness and movement that one seeks to balance. A balance of chakras, a balance of hormones and a balance of life is what one is aiming for. Colors are neutral to all of us, and using these neutrals he
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is appealing to each and every onlooker to find meaning of self, meaning of life and meaning of this existence. When his creations are considered ambassadors of peace, he is transforming himself into a peacemaker while questioning his own liberation from the structured ideas, ideologies and living. In the end the essences of his paintings is, his own nirvana, and hence helping us feel that liberation through his creations.
M. Shankar,
Artist & Curator NGMA, Mumbai
Ganshyam Gupta is a well-known artist of our country of his generation, who had been in the art field as a renowned artist at national & International art platforms with many art exhibitions and also holding excellent academic background in art such as Masters from India & Royal College of Art, London, UK. I have been a keen observer of his art journey. He is very creative & technically sound, creating his Iconic Circular Geometrical art forms in various sizes in different mediums with lovely colors with Indian Mythological images and high visual rhythmic colors applications. It is nice to know that many of his art works are in the national and international collections. During recent times he had been simultaneously working on creating 3D art works for Public open spaces which are very prominent. They are huge in size and standing as a milestone artworks establishing his identity that communicate some purpose with aesthetical appeal. As on day, these artworks cannot go unnoticed & it leaves a remark of appreciation in everyone's mind. With interest to have some for their personal collection, I hope his Bronze artworks in this show creates a new visual sensation among the viewers with promising aesthetical gist in it.
Ranjit Hoskote,
Art Critic & Curator
Ghanshyam Gupta brings, to his current work, his varied expertise as a printmaker trained in Baroda and London, as a sculptor, and as a painter. He addresses himself to abiding ideas such as universal peace, and a continuity between the spiritual quest and the world of nature. In his sculptures of meditative figures, he adroitly weaves together foliage and the body, as though deep dhyana has transfigured the seeker's body into a filigreed lacework of leaves. On the other hand, his sculptures of stylized animals refine the viscerality of bone and muscle into a sleek image of speed and strength.

Ghanshyam Gupta

Visual Artist | Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Available Artworks by Ghanshyam Gupta