Artist Bio

Natvar Bhavsar (b. 1934) is a contemporary American artist of Indian origin. He lives and works in SoHo, New York. Colors are his medium, Bhavsar has been exploring the sensual, emotional, and intellectual resonance of color since the early 1960s. His paintings evince influences from his childhood in India, surrounded by vivid textiles, practicing rangoli, and witnessing the Holi Festival, and adulthood in New York in the 1960s and ’70s, in a milieu that included fellow Abstract Expressionists like Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Ray Parker. To make his paintings, which range from intimate to grand, Bhavsar sifts powdered pigments onto canvas, allowing air currents and his own breath and body movements to determine where they fall, creating layered compositions.

“I think I have tried to convey how to free oneself,” he describes. “Using color as a force to reach towards the beauty and generosity of the material that allows you unlimited expression.”

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EDUCATION

1965 MFA, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, PA
1960 BA Gujarat University, Amdavad, India
1959 Bombay State Higher Art Examination, Bombay, India
1958 Bombay State Higher Art Examination, Bombay, India

HONORS & AWARDS

2010 Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation, Grant Award for Creative Contributions in the Arts
2000, 2002 Invited as Participant as Cultural Leader to the World Economic Forums in Davos, Switzerland and New York, NY
1987 Vishva Gurjari, Gujarat, India
1980, 1983 Invited as Participant in Executive's Seminars at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies at Aspen, CO
1975-76 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, New York, NY
1965-66 John D. Rockefeller III Fund Fellowship, New York, NY

TEACHING

1967-69 University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, Art Instructor
1957-62 Seth C.N. School of Fine Arts, Amdavad, Gujarat, India, Art Teacher
1954-57 Chanasma High Shool, Chanasma, Gujarat, India, Art Teacher