Indian painter Manjit Bawa dies at age 67
NEW DELHI (AP) — Manjit Bawa, a leading Indian artist whose work highlighted peaceful coexistence, has died. He was 67.
Bawa died at his New Delhi home on Monday after three years in a coma following a stroke, said Ashok Bajpai, a family friend and chairman of India’s National Academy of Art.
Bawa studied at the School of Art in New Delhi and worked as a silkscreen painter in Britain, where he also studied between 1964 and 1971.
Often using animal imagery — tigers and lambs sharing the same space — Bawa sought to convey the message that people could coexist with animals in nature, said art critic Ena Puri, who wrote a biography of Bawa.
His canvases were distinguished by their colors — the ochre of sunflowers, the green of paddy fields, the red of the sun and the blue of the mountain sky, she said.
“He was an icon, a person who was completely head and shoulders above his contemporaries,” Puri said.