Raju Sutar

A Dialogue with the Canvas

"I am always in the role of a painter. I have a filter and see objects as lines and structure", says Pune-based artist Raju Sutar who has experimented with a spectrum of mediums from oils to acrylic, water colours, tempera, dry pastels, charcoals, pencil and ink over the past 35 years. Recalling his love for drawing since childhood, Raju says he would mimic numbers and alphabets even before he was two years old, an attribute that had his father enrol him in an English school where he was admitted to Class I right away for his awareness of the alphabet!

Formal Education and Beyond

A chance meeting with an art school teacher who saw Raju's paintings on ply boards at his father's carpentry unit, had the teacher invite him to the school where he was fascinated by art and the pursuit of learning art. Yet, much before he enrolled in a G. D. Art (Drawing and Painting), Abhinav Kala Mahavidyala, Pune, in 1987, he worked on posters, screen-printed cards, decorations of Ganesh pandals, and 3-D drawings for his father.



At art school even as he learnt formal drawing and painting, Raju spent hours in the library studying artworks and reading on art history, great masters and modernists. He was partic...