Gopal Swami Khetanchi
Gopal Swami Khetanchi (conceived 15 February 1958) is an Indian painter situated in Jaipur. Hailing from an imaginative family in north Rajasthan, Khetanchi concentrated on compelling artwork in Jaipur and worked for quite a while as an associate workmanship chief in Bollywood and an artist for magazines, prior to getting back to Rajasthan to zero in on painting.
Khetanchi is known for painting dainty female figures, Rajput ladies, Rajasthani town ladies and posts, as well as adjusting old style European artistic creations to Indian adaptations. One more structure related with him is schedule kitsch. Recognizing highlights of his style are uniqueness, delicacy and quickness of drawing. However he is perceived as a pragmatist painter and self-distinguishes in that capacity, his works range from Romanticism to profound Realism and are held in different private and corporate assortments in India and abroad. His compositions have been shown at solo and gathering presentations at Jaipur, New Delhi, Mumbai, Singapore, Dubai and London.
Life
Khetanchi was brought into the world in north Rajasthan on 2 February 1958. He hails from Sardarshahar town in Churu locale. His dad Khetaram was a painter who filled in as a workmanship educator in an administration school in Sardarshahar. Khetanchi experienced childhood in Rajasthan in a climate helpful for workmanship and wandered into painting at 15 years old, beginning with representations and afterward moving to artworks. He was motivated by the works of art of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Ingres.
Khetanchi got a Bachelor of Arts degree in Drawing and Painting from University of Rajasthan in Jaipur. He fostered his canvas abilities in Mumbai, dealing with film sets and drawing passers-by at the Juhu ocean side. While in Mumbai, he filled in as an associate workmanship chief with Manzoor ul Haq on a few Bollywood films like Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (1978), Abdullah (1980), Jwalamukhi (1980) and Kaalia (1981). Khetanchi says he could have done without the climate of Bollywood and chosen to just channelise his imagination into painting. He got back to Rajasthan and began with painting strongholds and culture of the state. Throughout the long term, he caught the way of life, customs, country excellence, specialties and materials of Rajasthan. According to Khetanchi, he got spotlight and acknowledgment beginning from 2003, when his work was shown in both New Delhi and Jaipur.
Khetanchi lives in Jaipur, where he works from his studio.
Work
Gopal Swami Khetanchi with an artwork of the Jaisalmer Fort
Khetanchi works with oil on material, and has been doing as such starting around 1971. He has not explored different avenues regarding acrylics as he feels that he has better control on variety values with oil tones. He ordinarily requires a month to finish a work and works in four layers.
Khetanchi’s work saw a few stages and styles like Realism, Surrealism and Abstraction, prior to finishing in a mix of conventional and current craftsmanship. In 2006, the style in his display Shringar consolidated fine linework of Rajasthani small artistic creations with the beauty of Victorian kitsch. By 2011, he had moved from unadulterated figuration to applied renderings and began trying different things with various ranges and imaging styles.
Erik Maell writes of Khentanchi:
His appreciation of India’s rich and colorful history remains evident throughout his paintings, particularly his admiration of brave warriors and his fondness for the unparalleled beauty of Rajput women, as referenced in his Mona Lisa reinterpretations.
According to pundit P B Chandra, Khetanchi is maybe the main craftsman after Ram Gopal Vijayvargiya to spend significant time in painting ladies in different states of mind and excellence. Chandra accepts that Khetanchi’s portrayal of ladies is propelled by the style of Raja Ravi Varma, in spite of the fact that Khetanchi says that he has done whatever it takes not to mirror any previous painters or duplicate any peers and that his style of work is unique. Chandra wrote in 2003 that Khetanchi’s works were local in accentuation with a weighty portion of sentimentalism.
Khetanchi is known for giving a special Indian or Rajasthani contact to his works, particularly to the robes and foundation. His entertainment of Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus has a pearl-clad Rajasthani lady emerging from a lotus instead of a shell. When Indianising European canvases, Khetanchi adjusts the figures to Indian ideas of magnificence and doesn’t paint figures totally bare to stay away from any discussions. According to craftsmanship pundit Prayag Shukla, Khetanchi’s diversions of kinds of European canvases have both a Western and an Eastern setting.
Reevaluations of Mona Lisa
Khetanchi has reconsidered the Mona Lisa in two oil-on-solicits painted in 2006: Devashree (24 by 36 inches) and Bani-Thani (20 by 30 inches), of which the last option is a blend of the Mona Lisa and the eponymous artwork Bani Thani by Nihal Chand. Bani-Thani was utilized in the advancement for Le Festival des Écrivains du monde: Écrivains de l’Inde held in Paris in 2014 and on the front of the November-December 2014 version of Nouvelles De L’Inde, the every other month distribution of the Indian consulate in Paris.
Gandhigiri
Through his Gandhigiri peddles (2010), Khetanchi portrayed Mahatma Gandhi’s fantasy of an autonomous India liberated from destitution and difficulties by comparing Gandhi’s face with that of everyday citizens. Craftsmanship guardian Archana Bahl Sapra said that the display showed the “differentiating image of sparkling India and crying Bharat”. A few artworks showed Gandhi practically lost, as he sees an India which is current, quick, well informed, occupied and Bollywood-fixated on commercialization at its top, while others showed him seeing individuals battling in neediness because of debasement and government strategies.
Landmarks
Landmarks is one of the most loved topics of Khetanchi. He has painted the Jal Mahal and Hawa Mahal in his own unmistakable style. Moreover, he has painted many posts including three strongholds of Jaipur (Nahargarh Fort, Jaigarh Fort and Amber Fort), Jaisalmer’s Sonar Killa, Chittorgarh’s Vijay Stambha, Udaipur’s City Palace, Jodhpur’s Mehrangarh Fort, Bundi’s Taragarh Fort, Bikaner’s Junagarh Fort, Kuchaman Fort and Kumbhalgarh Fort. His presentation named Rajputana (2012) showed eleven works of art of different strongholds in Rajasthan.
Sees
Khetanchi, known for his adoration for Rajasthan, says of the state:
To me, Rajasthani beauty has an essence that appeals like nothing else. The way the women dress borders on covering their body and showing it off. There’s a mystery, an essence. For a simple example, a ghoonghat covering half her face is any day more enticing than the face itself. Her beautiful clothes sensuously running over her bare feet at times will arouse stronger emotions than complete nudity.
From 2008 to 2010, Khetanchi researched the message and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and their contemporary relevance. Khetanchi sees Mahatma Gandhi as a motivational force in his life. He is passionate about Gandhi’s vision and says:
An independent India, free not only from the Imperial rule or domination but also from poverty and hardships for the people, has remained a dream for Gandhiji! The present day atmosphere of consumerism still needs to be rectified. Like Gandhi we need to counter pose ancient Indian civilisation and emphasise on self governing village communities.
Khetanchi accepts that while craftsmanship may not offer answers for social issues, it brings them into center. He feels that unfamiliar travelers searching for Rajasthani craftsmanship ought to be provided right guidance with in-house direction, and they ought not be cheated by being sold modest workmanship at colossal costs. He considers himself to be a pragmatist, or a genuine companion of real truth, and says he picked reasonable craftsmanship since it is closer to human interest and simultaneously it is especially difficult.
Khetanchi accepts that numerous legacy places in Rajasthan have been dismissed and even aides, who don’t have a clue about the genuine meaning of the destinations, are uninformed about neighborhood artistic expressions like the Bundi school of workmanship.
Presentations
Khetanchi completes not many presentations, around one per year. The explanation, according to Khetanchi, is that his shows are topic based.
Solo shows
1998: Hotel Park Royal, New Delhi.
1998: Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur.
2002: Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur.
2003: Rabindra Bhawan, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi.
2003: Mahakaal at Surekh Gallery, Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur. The artworks in surrealist mode and unpretentious range portrayed dry season and starvation in Rajasthan.
2004: Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur.
2005: Rajputana Sheraton, Jaipur.
2005: Nehru Center, Mumbai.
2006: Shringar at Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur. This series of artworks portrayed princesses, prostitutes and specialists occupied with toilette ceremonies and beautification.
2006: Museum Gallery, Mumbai.
2007: Nehru Center, Mumbai. Indianised forms of popular European compositions, including Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus and Great Odalisque.
2008: Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur.
2008: A Tribute to The Masters at Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan, London. The assortment was an amusement of works of European painters with Khetanchi’s style and creative mind.
2008: A Tribute to The Masters at La Galleria, Pall Mall, London.
2010: Dharohar at Surekh Gallery, Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur. The presentation had 29 canvases observing Jaipur’s design and covered significant tourist spots of Jaipur including Nahargarh Fort, Jaigarh Fort, Jantar Mantar, Amber Fort and Hawa Mahal. The show was initiated by Arjun Prajapati and furthermore included a self-picture.
2010: Gandhi-giri at Art Positive, Delhi. The presentation showed 21 works of art: one establishment (Gandhi-giri fiberglass figure) and twenty compositions (remembering fifteen enormous oil-for peddles up to 15×6 feet in size). The artistic creations included Gender Bender, In Search of Truth, Three Monkeys, Empower the ladies to engage the country and Communal agreement, please. All works of art portrayed an old Gandhi with different components and figures supplementing or countering the talk. Orientation Bender portrayed womanhood and ladies as a feature of Gandhi’s distractions, while In Search of Truth and Gandhi-giri exhibited the prototype picture of Gandhi as a savvy chief.
2011: Gallery Parijat II, Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur.
2012: Rajputana at Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur. This show showed eleven compositions of posts in Rajasthan.
Bunch displays
1999: Art Today, New Delhi.
2000: Art Today, New Delhi.
2003: Dhoomimal Art Gallery, New Delhi.
2007: Art Fair, Singapore.
2008: Arts cape, Epicenter, Gurgaon.
2009: Art Mat, Epicenter, Gurgaon.
2011: Blessing (40 by 60 inches, oil on material) at Art Positive, New Delhi.
2015: Gandhigiri: Power of the loom and the high quality at Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi.
