Dhruva Mistry

(India) *1957 in Kanjari, Gujarat

Born in India, Dhruva Mistry first studied art at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda, India, and then at the Royal College of Art in London. Dhruva Mistry is today considered one of Britain's best known artists. Indian and English influences converge in his work. He himself says his origins in a family of Indian carpenters defined his view of art and his interests. For many years, his work investigated the human figure. He translated India's rich traditional canon of forms into that of modern art, both in painting and increasingly in sculpture. Mistry then started dissolving his sensual physical figures into abstract forms, until finally all that remained were fundamental associative linkages to the human form. The geometric, abstract composition “Spatial Diagram“ unleashes a quite unique dynamism from the spatial evolution of the bent rods. Only when you walk round the sculpture do you experience spatially, what his diagram sketches: you can intimate the presence of a human figure seated on the ground, reduced to the key coordinates of the human body, defined by the rump and the extremities.