Narayan Shridhar Bendre was a 20th-century Indian artist and one of the founder members of Baroda Group, Narayan Shridhar Bendre was born in Indore. He made a name for himself as a landscape artist. In 1992 he was awarded the Padma Bhushan.
His initial interests were conditioned by the quasi-modernist landscape painting as practiced in the Indore School at the beginning of the 20th century. An avid traveler, Bendre continued to paint the landscape throughout his career, often with different stylistic means.
Early recognition came with the Silver Medal from the Bombay Art Society in 1934, followed by the then ultimate honour of the gold medal in 1941. Part of 1945 was spent as artist-in-residence at Santiniketan, where he met Nandalal Bose, Ramkinkar Baij and Binode Behari Mukherjee. He also met Jamini Roy in Calcutta. Bendre’s early work has been classified as being academic and impressionist, dominant subjects being the landscape and the portrait, in oils and gouache.
He visited West Asia and London in 1958, the US and Japan in 1962. The adventure of modernism that Bendre carried from Bombay to Baroda bore fruit in the formation of the Baroda Group of artists in 1956. Along with Bendre, several of the first generation of his students at Baroda were members of the Group, which held regular shows in Bombay, Ahmedabad and Baroda, providing wide exposure to work being produced at the new art school.
Vikash Kalra is a self-taught artist and writer based in New Delhi whose work has been exhibited across India and is held in several private and corporate collections.