Delhi’s newest art gallery takes flight

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Savita Agrawal’s painting at Shree Yash Art Gallery

The space for art in the capital continues to spread wider and wider with new galleries springing up everywhere. Adding to this artistic and infrastructural rush is Shree Yash Art Gallery that started a chapter at Green Park recently.
A brainchild of Savita Agrawal, who belongs to the diminishing tribe of wash painting artists, the gallery aims to provide a platform to the upcoming artists through exhibitions, seminars and workshops.
At the gallery’s opening show, the works (in a whole host of mediums from watercolours, oil on canvas to mixed media) of a clutch of artists, both established and emerging, were on display.
They included M.L. Jhala’s Raghuvansham (worth `15 lakh), Chinchawadkar’s Fighting Cock (worth `3 lakh), Harish Kumar’s Moment of Joy (worth `1,50,000) and Manjit Singh’s Urvashi (worth `1 lakh). The show also brought to the fore the founder — artist Savita Agrawal’s own wash paintings like Divine Love, Serene Surrender and Mother Earth.
At 63, Savita, a post-graduate in Arts from Agra University, is excited with the possibilities that the gallery will throw open.
“It had always been my dream to do something for the arts. With this gallery, I finally get a chance to institutionalise my interest in it. I feel immensely satisfied,” says Savita, a great admirer of Jamini Roy and Asit Kumar Haldar.
Reminiscing about her initiation into art, Savita shares how she always got awards for drawing and painting when she started painting at Class 7 in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, where she hails from. She completed her first wash painting, First Love, in 1970. Over the years, she romanced other mediums like knife-painting, miniatures and oil, and used thermocol and leaves in some of her works, etc. But she gifted most of her works to friends and relatives as a token of her love. “They wanted something of my self, so I gave them my paintings,” she says, smiling.
As a painter, Savita needs tremendous concentration. Of late, while she gets to paint occasionally, most of her time is spent with her family.
She says the new gallery is a result of her husband’s (Mahesh Chandra Agrawal of the Brijbasi Hi-Tech Group) constant support. Her daughter-in-law Yamini Agrawal and granddaughters, Shriya and Sharanya, have also taken a keen interest in art. They have done some watercolours and keep learning the nuances of painting from her.
Meanwhile, Savita has also been indulging in another passion: Reiki. As its practitioner, she has healed some “chronic patients”.
She feels there can’t be anything better than healing the suffering people; to see their pain ebbing away.