Born in 1960, Buwa Shete graduated in Applied Arts from Abhinav Kala, Pune, in 1983. After graduating, he worked with advertising agencies as a creative director and illustrator for several years, while painting simultaneously. His first recognition came when he won an award at the National Exhibition of Young Painters in Calcutta, organized by M. F. Hussain. His paintings for a calendar on “Philosophy by Various Saints” won the London Advertising Award in 1997. Buwa’s paintings are in the collections of Theramax, Swastik Batteries, IKEA, ICIL, as well as in private collections in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi and New York. Buwa is unafraid of size and flirts outrageously with color. He uses everyday themes like parent and child (“Father and Child”, “Mother and Child”), and subject matter like priests and turbaned village men and turns them into a profusion of bold strokes and color, rendering contemporary, modernist images in rough, strong brush strokes that border on the fantastic. Shete has held two solo shows and a number of group shows in Mumbai, Delhi, and Dubai. His style is characterized by contemporary modernist figures, rendered mysterious by his uniquely Indian style.
