ART AS JOYOUS EXPRESSION

Large smudges graphite powder, briskly drawn lines in crayons and point-pecked dots present a world of credulous romancing. With nebulous thoughts waiting to be born in to different biomorphic forms. There is no attempt to express to familiar and the mundane. Rather the whole exercise seems to be loud thinking, impassioned though inarticulate, and suggestive though abstract. Whether one can read the emerging shapes through normal ratiocination is not the question.
The gay abandon which is expressed in this rambling in to the realm of creativity does not indicate that any such question was considered by the artist. But the joyous morph sis bring out the element of movement in rich variety-sometime the stabbing speed of a line drown with great force , some time the tip-toeing float of clouds, and at others the suddenness of a hailstorm. Use of eraser to “rub-cut” sharp lines and strokes is made to accomplish a similar aim: speed and movement, often heightened by diagonals. Large areas of blank drawing sheet bring in to focus this underlying element aptly. And this is what transcends the craftiness of art which some artists “show off”. Because the skill is exceptional, the creative expression in the present case comes through with effortless exultation. This is the work of Vidhyasagar Upadhyay[41] a well-known artist of Jaipur.

S.S. Bhatti
THE TRIBUNE –CHANDIGARH, 23, MARCH, 1990

VERSATILE HANDIWORK FROM VIDHYASAGAR

Vidhyasagar Upadhyay returns to the Jehangir Art Gallery with acrylic on canvas, water color on paper and acrylic and pencil con paper. He comes from Rajasthan has had no hangover of he miniature tradition of that region. One may say that, on the other hand, it is the natural beauty of that region which stand reflacted in his lucid and poetic abstracts.
The show is dominated by a large canvas [108’x68’] which is a superb piece of formal and chromatic orchestration. The other works, either in water color or acrylic, may be call offshoots of this giant central tree.
While every Tom, Dick and Harry is an abstractionist today, it is a pleasure to see Upadhyay‘s very distinctive and thought full work.

Dnyaneshwar Nadakarni
MID-DAY, DEC. 26, 1986, BOMBAY

UPADHYAY’S PENCIL DRAWINGS

New Delhi, Jan.25, many of the pencil drawings in Upadhyay exhibition at the Fine Art gallery could have been taken for study for sculpture, structure is his subject. Many in black and white ,and in the tones that graphite can render directly or by exploiting surface textures or by manipulating ‘screens’ beneath, these drawings of Upadhyay define form and establish an abstract spatial concept .
There is nothing fancy or complicated about the drawings. Rhythm is stressed and achieved by juxtaposing [or balancing] simple, undulating forms, match in the Swami Nathan manage with clear colors.
Phasing this rhythm by introducing graded panels or by diversifying the surface, Upadhyay is able to put across a melodic motif.
Clearly this young artist from Udaipur has also taken his cues from the lithographs and silk screen prints of Carol Summers, the American print makers. Consider Drawing 19 In some other drawings figuration is clearly disguised but can be sensed, and spotted, as in drawing 8 and there is a reference to the land scape, I believe in Drawing 21.
As much of this is done without resort to the symmetry and the symbolism of recent ‘Tantra’ paintings one is led to believe that the Upadhyay is going the hard way-“the way of dispossession” to quote Eliot.
This upsurge of good drawing reminds me of young and vital art which sprung up in the south some ten years ago when had good draftsman and talents who were greatly austere [those talents are now practically spent.] Upadhyay has chosen this way presumably because other in Rajasthan are patently cashing in on modified tradition.
‘I wish him all success.’

Richard Bartholomeo
TIMES OF INDIA, New Delhi, 28TH JAN. 1973