Atmosphere

Indian ethos, philosophy and values form the core of my work," said Pune-based artist Vijay Shinde. "Art has no boundaries or barriers, but an artist invariably draws inspiration from the people and the surroundings around," he added. On his part, the prolific artist had read the works of Swami Vivekananda and J Krishnamoorti apart from India’s popular mythological sagas to imbibe the strands of India’s mystical and spiritual traditions.

Vijay Shinde belonged to Sholapur in the state of Maharashtra. There was no encouragement to take up painting as a career then. However, he was interested in painting right from his childhood. Of course, the idea of choosing painting as a full-time vocation was not on his mind then.

In 1984, Vijay Shinde had his first solo show at Jehangir Art gallery. He  had over 22 solo shows apart from many prestigious group exhibitions that he took part in. Among them was the inaugural show of Gallery Tao in January 2000 along with artists like S H Raza, Prabhakar Kolte, Sujata Bajaj, and Anant Nikam. He was also part of traveling show that comprised forty-four Pune-based artists who had come together to offer a tribute to Maqbool Fida Husain on his 88th birthday. The show was organised by Sanjeev Singhal.

He was primarily known as an abstract artist. Initially he did portraiture and figurative work as well. Slowly, he turned to abstraction. Over the two decades or so, he has only done abstracts. What prompts him to do abstracts is the mystic element involved in them, and the subtle sense of expression and the intriguing relationship that he can establish with the space on canvas through abstracts.Unfortunately we lost him in a very young age.