Deviprasad Rao’s
‘Beyond Barcelona’ drawings to be exhibited at Gallery Attic

PANAJI: 22-March-2008:

Gallery Attic presents ‘Beyond Barcelona Prelude’ drawings by Deviprasad C Rao, a freelance journalist, photographer and now full time painter.  The exhibition will begin on 26th March and will conclude on 15th April, 2008.

When Deviprasad Rao made a trip to Barcelona, six years ago, he could have hardly envisaged then, how this visit would describe his career. All that he saw and experienced affected him deeply, particularly the Catalan modernists Miro, Klee and architect Gaudi. As to be expected in a young painter what followed was a body of works influenced by these painters titled the “Minutiae Series”. These works were well received for their freshness and charm and contributed to Deviprasad’s career as painter; and set the tone for the drawings exhibited in “Beyond Barcelona Prelude”, which form part of the Beyond Barcelona collection of drawings and canvas works.

At first glance Deviprasad’s drawings look child-like. As in children’s works the objects hang independent of one another and are also what can be described as the calligraphy of a tree, leaf, twigs, fence etc. Here too, he is close to the creed of “Catalanism” which has lent organic life to the stark geometries of cubism and infused into cubist austerities the playful poetics of Surrealist Symbolism.

Swatee Nair, a Goa based artist and art critic, says “I have referred to Deviprasad as an “Artist of the Floating World”. And although he retains the allure of Alice in Wonderland and a rabbit going down a hole, in the present drawings one gets the impression of looking through glass of a skyscraper – a bird’s eye view of what looks like the psychogeographical map of the naked city sprawling below.”